Room Escape Artist

My kind of town, but not our kind of game

Location: Downtown Chicago

Date Played: June 27, 2026

Team Size: any; we recommend 2-4 (at least one adult to supervise 1-3 kids playing the game)

Duration: 60 minutes

Price: about $20

REA Reaction

Tour in a Box is an entry in the walking tour/ scavenger hunt hybrid genre that sends you to real-world locations and then asks you questions about them. First point of clarification: there was no box. It’s a web-based tour on your phone, although there is an offline mode available. We played the version based in our home city of Chicago.

As a tour, it was pretty good! The game led us to a dozen locations downtown, starting at the Art Institute. At each stop, we learned interesting facts about the particular landmark—including some information that we didn’t know, even as Chicagoans. We liked learning new things, usually about the art or architecture at the site.

We did the tour on a sunny Saturday afternoon, and while the locations were pretty crowded, it was still an enjoyable walk of about a mile.

Now, we do need to mention, there are many, many other architectural tours available in Chicago, and they are generally considered excellent introductions to the city. You might choose Tour in a Box if you want a tour that is shorter, less expensive (by about half), and self-guided. But the puzzle aspect was not strong enough to distinguish it from the typical Chicago tour.

Unfortunately, the game portion of the tour was significantly weaker than the scenery. We were “agents” tasked with gathering clues to help us identify the target of an upcoming heist. Each step of our mission had three parts: 1) Directions to the new location; 2) an “intel” page of history/ trivia about the location; and 3) a “cipher” to solve at the location.

One issue we had, and we admit this is “pet peeve” territory: the “ciphers” were not ciphers, they were riddles. A “cipher” implies there is a puzzle to solve or a code to break to reveal a message. These were simple rhyming questions.

The larger issue: the difficulty level of the riddles is so low (we’d say it’s at a first- or second-grade level) that Tour in a Box might be reaching out to the wrong audience. People looking for an escape room-type experience will find no enjoyment from the puzzle aspect of this game; there’s no challenge.

We would recommend this game for families trying to keep their younger children (12 and under) engaged while the older family members learn some Chicago history.

Who is this for?

• Outdoorsy Folks
• Urban Explorers
• Newbies
• Kids under the age of 12

Why play?

• Play this game for a guided tour of the neighborhood around Millennium Park in Chicago.

Story

There was going to be a heist tonight, somewhere in Chicago! We were agents tasked with identifying the thieves’ target.

Setup

We followed directions to a series of real-world locations in downtown Chicago. At each stop, we learned a little about the history of the landmark, and had to answer a question about it to proceed to the next location.

Gameplay

Tour in a Box’s Chicago Game was a standard city-tour game with a very easy level of difficulty.

The gameplay consisted of the easiest riddles we’d ever seen.

Analysis

➕ The directions from place to place were really good, apart from one direction where we felt it was unclear if we were supposed to stay on the same side of a bridge and go to the other side of the river, or stay on the same side of the river and go to the other side of the bridge.

❓There was an audio element to the missions in which our “handler” fed us the information. However, we didn’t try to listen to it because most of the locations we were sent to are famously loud. For example, the Art Institute, where the game begins, has at least one person drumming on a paint bucket in front of it approximately 100% of the time. That said, a solo player with earphones would presumably have no trouble with this.

➖ Since we couldn’t use the audio, the immersive element of us being “agents” didn’t really work for us. Contextually, we also didn’t feel like agents because the puzzles felt more like wikipedia-parsing quests than actual puzzles.

➖ Given that this game was presented to us as an escape-room-like challenge, the “puzzles” were insultingly easy. Like, the Willis Tower was not a stop on this tour, but if it had been, the answer to the riddle would have been “Tower.” Our kids started playing a game where they tried guessing the answer to the next riddle before we even reached the location, and a couple times, they were right!

➖ As a tour-based game, the riddles were so easy they created a critical flaw: you don’t need to be in Chicago to solve them. Seven of the twelve intel pages provided the exact answer word to the puzzle. On top of that, the riddles were written to be even easier. One asked for a feature of a particular statue that is also a feature of pretty much every statue everywhere. Another asked a somewhat cryptically-worded question, but then continued with a line that was basically, “Also, this is the color of the sky.” From a puzzle standpoint, the tour was pointless when the average person could come up with these answers right off the dome.

➕ The selection of locations was really good, a mix of the big tourist attractions and less-famous locations with interesting stories.

➕/➖ There was a metapuzzle at the end that was great in concept. It was a really good foundation to build a game around, but the execution of said game left much to be desired.

Tips For Players

• Required Gear: A cell phone and weather-appropriate clothing/ gear.

Buy your copy of Tour in a Box’s “Chicago”, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: Tour in a Box provided a complimentary game.