Room Escape Artist

Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaceeeeeeee!

Location: at home

Date Played: January 2, 2026

Team Size: 1-4; we recommend 1-2

Duration: 2-3 hours

Price: $75 CAD

REA Reaction

I’m a sucker for a kitschy sci-fi comic inspired by the 80s and 90s, and The Alien Ship did an interstellar job of combining puzzles, comics, story, artwork, and humor. Each puzzle fit in the orbit of the game world, combining a page or two of the actual comic to read, a puzzle to solve, and a solution to check on CLAIR, your AI (solution disk similar to that of Exit the Game). We desperately wanted more of the comic itself as our favorite part was getting the little story blips and admiring the artwork between puzzle solving. The puzzles frequently utilized the art in the comic, and left breadcrumbs throughout the artwork that culminated to help solve the final sequence.

While the puzzles were thematic and felt like they belonged in the game world, some of the components struggled from lack of polish and were finicky to extract a solution from, even when we knew how to execute the solve. While the game did a pretty good job of hiding future puzzle information in the artwork, sometimes information that was not useful for the current solve would cause confusion. We strongly recommend playing the game in one night or during consecutive nights, as information throughout the game is relevant later. We struggled occasionally to identify when a puzzle required previous knowledge, but we did take a few day-long breaks between play sessions.

Escape Comics’ The Alien Ship is launching on Kickstarter today and I suggest backing it if you appreciate a great comic with puzzles along the way! Of note, they are offering a discounted price today only, for the launch of the Kickstarter.

Who is this for?

• Sci-fi explorers
• Comic book nerds
• Best for players with at least some experience

Why play?

• Old school comic book humor and artwork
• Puzzles that mesh well with the story

Story

As the captain of the League of Nations intergalactic team, we were sent on an expedition to discover the secret plans of an alien race and stop them before they could wipe out planet Earth!

Setup

Within The Alien Ship box, we found multiple envelopes sealed for later and, well, a comic book. (It IS called Escape Comics after all!) This comic book was used as a guide throughout the experience, providing us the story, puzzle elements, and steps for progression. Most of the envelopes contained paper and cardboard used in unusual ways.

Hints were delivered through a progressive hint deck, with different amounts of hints depending on the complexity of the puzzle. Answer verification included a decoder disk and a deck of cards, similar to the Exit the Game series.

The Alien Ship box was fully resettable without any printing or destructive components.

Gameplay

Escape Comics’ The Alien Ship was a narrative driven, play-at-home escape game with a moderate level of difficulty.

Core gameplay orbited around reading a page or two in the comic, being pointed to an envelope or other material in the game box, solving the puzzle using items both in the envelope and items we had unlocked previously, and verifying the solution with the decoder disk.

The puzzles included observation, manipulation of objects, making connections, and reading between the lines.

Analysis

➕ The story, components, artwork, and humor struck the perfect balance of 80s/ 90s sci-fi comic books. We loved reading the panels between every puzzle and piecing together the story.

➕ Escape Comics had a fantastic progressive hint system that helped whenever we got stuck. We loved how the puzzles had a varied amount of hints depending on puzzle complexity, and all included a walkthrough in case we got REALLY stuck.

➖ One puzzle did not fit together properly, leaving gaps between important pieces and requiring significantly more trial and error than expected. Additionally, this puzzle required a player to hold an object up, hindering their ability to solve using only one hand. We never ended up finishing this puzzle fully, but got the gist of the solve enough to move on.

➕ We especially loved a simple yet elegant early-game solve with some of the more interesting components in the box.

➖ Symbols that were used throughout were sometimes difficult to identify and tell apart, causing a cypher to be tedious on occasion. Thankfully, there were no large portions of translation.

➕/➖ A specific late-game puzzle had a clever solution that we appreciated, but using the cardboard pieces to accomplish the solve was difficult. We had trouble keeping these components perfectly aligned to see the answer.  

➕ The game was fully resettable to hand off when we’d finished. No components were destroyed, and clear instructions were provided to help repackage the game.

Tips For Players

• Space Requirements: A small table
• Required Gear: A pen and paper

Back Escape Comics’ The Alien Ship, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: Escape Comics provided a complimentary game.