Category: Products

Deckscape – Behind the Curtain [Review]

by Lisa Spira, posted in Deckscape, Products, Reviews, Tabletop Escape Game

Card magic

Location:  at home

Date Played: February 12, 2020

Team size: 1-6; we recommend 2-3

Duration: 60 minutes

Price: about ~$15

REA Reaction

Deckscape games are consistently fun and playfully designed.

In recent installments, the games’ creators have put interesting and engaging spins on the gameplay. That was true of the stage magic-themed Behind the Curtain.

The stage magic box art for Deckscape - Behind the Curtain.

Since their first installment, however, Deckscape has always included a couple of gotcha “puzzles” that feel more like a game of “guess what I’m thinking” than a fair, solvable puzzle. I keep getting the impression that Deckscape’s designer feels that a game needs something that lots of people get wrong. While Behind the Curtain would have been more satisfying if every puzzle felt fair, thankfully we pushed through our early moments of frustration to reveal a truly satisfying play-at-home escape game.

From our perspective, Behind the Curtain was one of the strongest games in Deckscape’s respectable stable.

Who is this for?

  • Puzzle lovers
  • Any experience level

Why play?

  • Solid puzzle play
  • Clever use of simple concepts from magic
  • This is one of Deckscape’s stronger products

Story

We had received an anonymous envelope with free tickets to a magic show performed by the legendary Lance Oldman in New York City… so we went to the show…

The deck of cards and a mysterious envelope.

Setup

Behind the Curtain followed the same structure as all previous Deckscape games. We explained this in detail in our first Deckscape review of their original games Test Time & The Fate of London.

The only key difference in Behind the Curtain was the inclusion of a mysterious envelope.

Gameplay

Deckscape’s Behind the Curtain was a standard play-at-home escape game with a moderate level of difficulty.

Core gameplay revolved around observing and making connections.

Early puzzle cards introducing the main character, magician Lance Oldman.

Analysis

➕ Deckscape created magically thematic puzzles for Behind the Curtain. They would obscure, change, and misdirect. We appreciated how the gameplay style made sense with the story.

➕ In Behind the Curtain, Deckscape included props that allowed them to do more than they could otherwise have accomplished with only the deck of cards. They employed these in thematically relevant ways to add intrigue and deliver satisfying solves. They stretched these few additional props remarkably far.

➖ We encountered a few puzzles that felt like “gotcha” moments. One early puzzle was so egregiously obnoxious that we thought about quitting. Deckscape always throws in a couple of garbage puzzles and we hate that they do it.

➖ It wasn’t always clear – from the wording or the illustrations – when you needed an object or what you needed to understand about an object in order to solve a puzzle. This led to a couple of choke points where it was difficult to use the hint system to even figure out where to focus our attention.

➖ Although you should be able to solve through multiple stacks of cards at once for the bulk of the game, we broke sequence at one point due to some confusion born from the game’s art.

➕ We enjoyed an artistic late-game solve and the finale.

Tips For Players

  • Space Requirements: a small table
  • Required Gear: just the game

Buy your copy of Deckscape’s Behind the Curtain, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Buy Behind the Curtain

Support Room Escape Artist’s Mission

There are lots of ways to support Room Escape Artist, like buying from Amazon after clicking into the links included in this post or backing us on Patreon.

The money that we make from these helps us to grow the site and continue to add more value to the community that we love so much.

Exit: The Game – The Mysterious Museum [Review]

by Lisa Spira, posted in Exit The Game, Products, Reviews, Tabletop Escape Game

The Mysterious Time Machine

Location:  at home

Date Played: February 19, 2020

Team size: 1-4; we recommend 2-3

Duration: 1-2 hours

Price: about $10

Publisher: Thames & Kosmos

REA Reaction

Exit: The Game’s The Mysterious Museum was one of our favorites of the series… and it completely caught us off guard. The name and packaging looked painfully drab and unappealing, so much so that it sat on our shelf collecting dust for about a year. It turned out that this boxed escape game was actually a clever time travel story.

The box art for the Mysterious Museum, depicts the entrance to an exhibit.
The packaging doesn’t reflect the gameplay.

The Mysterious Museum was one of the easiest tabletop escape games that we’ve played, but don’t read that as a criticism. There is an underappreciated joy that comes from playing a beginner-friendly tabletop puzzle game; things just click and flow.

The puzzle style was more about observation and connection than deeper solving. If you are an experienced puzzler, especially one familiar with the Exit: The Game series, your playthrough will likely go by quickly. We may have breezed through this game in under 30 minutes, but we weren’t bothered by that because we found that time so enjoyable.

Who is this for?

  • Puzzle lovers
  • Tabletop puzzlers
  • Any experience level

Why play?

  • This was one of the smoothest Exit: The Game experiences we’ve played
  • Some clever puzzles that we enjoyed as experienced players, but are straightforward enough for beginners
  • Fantastic low-key Easter eggs for Exit: The Game fans

Story

On a field trip to the Florence Natural History Museum, we had accidentally fiddled with an artifact and found ourselves traveling through time!

Closeup of the initial puzzle's art, depicts a closed museum ticket counter.

Setup

Our first review of Exit: The Game dove deep into their core mechanics. You can visit that review for more structural details.

Gameplay

Exit: The Game’s The Mysterious Museum was a standard play-at-home escape game with an easy level of difficulty.

Core gameplay revolved around searching, observing, and making connections.

Assorted game components.

Analysis

➕ With The Mysterious Museum, Exit: The Game put an interesting twist on the escape “room” format. We moved through the same room repeatedly, in different time periods. We liked this change in format.

➕ We enjoyed the art direction and illustrations in The Mysterious Museum.

➖ Although we enjoyed the uses of destructibles in this escape game, we think the gameplay would have been cleaner if those destructible puzzles were presented in reverse order, with the destruction as the means to the solve first, and as the crux of the solve second.

➖ One puzzle didn’t speak to us clearly enough. It was a little out there.

➕ We enjoyed Exit: The Game’s twist on “mysterious object” for this game.

➕ Exit: The Game has continued to find ways to innovate while relying on the same core game mechanics. While not unexpected, this game’s innovation was an especially bright spot in our playthrough.

➕ At the conclusion of The Mysterious Museum, Exit: The Game included some amusing little keepsakes. We enjoyed the prizes and an Easter egg.

➖ Looking back at the hint cards after we’d finished, the stage 1 hinting seemed a bit heavy-handed.

Tips For Players

  • Space Requirements: a small table
  • Required Gear: scissors

Buy your copy of Exit: The Game’s The Mysterious Museum, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Buy The Mysterious Museum

Disclosure: Exit: The Game provided a sample for review.

Support Room Escape Artist’s Mission

There are lots of ways to support Room Escape Artist, like buying from Amazon after clicking into the links included in this post or backing us on Patreon.

The money that we make from these helps us to grow the site and continue to add more value to the community that we love so much.

How To Spell Any 4-Letter Word in a Word Lock

by David Spira, posted in Lock, Products, Room Design

“So, I’m a gamemaster and I made a bet with my boss that I could find a 4-letter word lock that we could spell ‘SWAN’ with. I’m struggling!!! Any chance you could help me out? I’ll buy multiple locks and trade the gears if needed. Thank you!!”

Anonymous Gamemaster (who is winning a bet)

This is a fun little problem that you have.

There isn’t a lock on the market that can solve this problem for you, but as you alluded to in your question, there are two locks that can combine to solve the problem.

The Problem

So the issue is that “W” is a rare second letter in English and therefore not included in the second disk on the various word locks with fixed disks.

A 5 disk alphanumeric combination lock.

This leaves you with the customizable Master Lock 1534D 5-digit letter lock… but that’s a problem because it has 5 disks, not 4. Master Lock doesn’t sell a 4-disk letter lock variant.

The Solution

The good news is that there is a solution.

A 4 digit number lock.

The Master Lock 1523D 4-digit number lock uses disks that are functionally identical to the letter disks of the aforementioned Master Lock 1534D 5-digit letter lock.

If you purchase both locks, and swap the disks, you can put in any 4-letter disks you want, in any order, onto the smaller lock. There you have a 4-digit word lock with the combination “SWAN.”

Support Room Escape Artist’s Mission

There are lots of ways to support Room Escape Artist, like buying from Amazon after clicking into the links included in this post or backing us on Patreon.

The money that we make from these helps us to grow the site and continue to add more value to the community that we love so much.

Our Quarantine Tabletop Escape Room To Play List

by Lisa Spira, posted in Products

In this time of social distancing, we’re staying positive and embracing the opportunity to play many of the play-at-home escape rooms and other puzzle games that have been piling up around us. Some of these, for far too long.

The iconic scene from The Twilight Zone's "Time Enough at Last." The man on Earth surrounded by his books just before he breaks his glasses.
If you aren’t laughing right now, go watch, The Twilight Zone’s “Time Enough at Last”

Typically we don’t publish about products until we can vouch for their quality… so buyer beware. A listing here is not necessarily an endorsement. This is more of a statement that “This is a thing that exists and might be entertaining.”

Please reference An Escape Room Players Guide To Self-Quarantine for a list of suggestions that we’ve already reviewed.

If you know of other tabletop escape games that we haven’t yet reviewed that you think we’ll enjoy, please let us know and please let everyone reading know by writing a comment.

Reviews Coming Soon

REA’s “To Play” List

Boxed Escape Rooms

Subscriptions

Books

Puzzles

For Kids

Watching the Mail

These new games are on the way to us – we think – and if they arrive, we’ll add them to the list.

If you know of other tabletop escape games that we haven’t yet reviewed that you think we’ll enjoy, please let us know and please let everyone reading know by writing a comment.

Support Room Escape Artist’s Mission

There are lots of ways to support Room Escape Artist, like buying from Amazon after clicking into the links included in this post or backing us on Patreon.

The money that we make from these helps us to grow the site and continue to add more value to the community that we love so much.

An Escape Room Players Guide To Self-Quarantine

by David Spira, posted in Products

As more of us are working from home and self-isolating, we figured that we’d put together a little entertainment guide to help keep everyone’s minds occupied.

A lone person looking out a window in a dark room. Labeled, "Escape Room Player's Isolation Guide."

Community

If you’re looking for some company, may I suggest the “Escape Room ‘Secret Slack.'”

It’s filled with lovely escape room folk, and we wrote a guide to it a while back.

Cryptex Hunt

The Cryptex Hunt ended last week, but the puzzles will be available for all to enjoy (depending upon your definition of enjoyment) until the end of March 2020.

We have a guide for that too.

Tabletop Game

Call it catharsis, or call it macabre, but I know we aren’t alone in wanting to play some Pandemic. With all of this chaos, it’s kind of nice to feel like you can exercise some control.

Base Pandemic is a great time. If you haven’t played Pandemic Legacy Season 1 and Season 2, these games are an incredible way to spend a large amount of hours. Be sure to play them in order.

  • Pandemic Legacy Season 1 red box art.
  • Pandemic Legacy Season 2 blue box art.

Tabletop Escape Rooms

There are tons of great tabletop escape games, and most of our favorites are currently available on our Amazon Store.

Visit the REA Amazon Store

Discount Codes

Enigma Emporium (Carte Rouge, Wish You Were Here, and other games) is running a 30% off sale with the code “StaySafeStayCurious”.

The Conundrum Box (Christmas Seasonal Escape Room Box Review & others on our to play list) is having a 20% off sale with the code “SPRING”.

If you notice other discount codes are introduced or expired, please contact us and we’ll update this section.

Mobile Games

On mobile, there are tons of great escape room-y puzzle games:

YouEscape

YouEscape is an online escape game played through Google Hangouts. We’ve played and reviewed a few of the YouEscape games. They’re especially fun to play with people that you can’t see in real life… and depending upon your particular set of circumstances, that might be everyone.

Wizard’s Escape

The MIT Mystery Hunt had an incredible audio escape room puzzle. It’s hard relative to escape room puzzle difficulty, but so worth it. We have a whole post on it.

Podcasts

Speaking of audio and escape rooms, there are tons of episodes of Escape This Podcast & The Room Escape Divas to catch up on. A handful of these episodes feature us… if that’s a selling feature.

Escape This Podcast

In these episodes we try to solve an audio escape room scenario, complete with a set, characters, and puzzles:

If you’re into Escape This Podcast, down in the comments, Scott Weiss has offered to run one of his games inspired by the ETP format. We have a review of that as well.

Room Escape Divas

In these episodes we chat with the Room Escape Divas about the escape room industry:

Escape Rooms Gift Cards

There’s a good chance that your friendly neighborhood escape room business is hurting right now.

Many escape room companies have shifted to private bookings, so if you’re going with people that you would otherwise remain confined with at home, it’s certainly safer than going to a movie theater.

If you’re not looking to play now, it’s a kindness to pre-purchase your eventual games. A lot of escape room companies could really use the cash flow.

Holiday Buyer’s Guides

We have a few years’ worth of Holiday Buyer’s Guides. We put a year’s worth of research into each holiday buyer’s guide, something that we didn’t have time to do this week. You should check them out, and seriously consider purchasing a Hobbit Hole. It will complete you.

What’s On Our Quarantine Play List?

For the next few weeks we are shifting a lot more of our attention to reviewing play-at-home games and puzzles. We think that’s a healthier focus for the time being.

Come back tomorrow when we’ll share the list of things that we’ll be playing for the next few weeks. (Update: Check out Our Quarantine Tabletop Escape Room To Play List here.)

We will be welcoming your suggestions too!

Support Room Escape Artist’s Mission

There are lots of ways to support Room Escape Artist, like buying from Amazon after clicking into the links included in this post or backing us on Patreon.

The money that we make from these helps us to grow the site and continue to add more value to the community that we love so much.

Boxed Escape Rooms at NY Toy Fair

by Lisa Spira, posted in News, Tabletop Escape Game

We have some great news from New York Toy Fair!

This is a strange event: it’s a massive convention center full of toys… and no children anywhere in sight!

At New York Toy Fair, retailers and distributors promote all their latest products and those soon to be released. This is an industry-only event, held in the New York Javits Center, with booths spanning two floors.

Exit The Game's new 2020 products.

Toy Fair 2020

This year – our fourth year attending New York Toy Fair – we were excited by the variety of offerings coming soon to the play-at-home escape room market. Moreover, in our conversations with the vendors, we were impressed by a dedication to quality products.

ravensburger's new escape puzzles.

We learned what’s new on the market and coming soon in 2020 from many of our favorite tabletop escape room brands:

… and many more.

A life sized Dog Crimes from Thinkfun.

Learn the Details

If you’re interested in what’s coming soon in tabletop escape games, we shared more details with our Patreon backers in our Toy Fair Video Hot Take.

Back REA on Patreon

2020 Events

We’re looking forward to the escape room and immersive industry events of 2020. We’ll be sharing our reports, reactions, and analyses of these events – written and video – with our Patreon backers.

HERE

Next up: We’ll be attending HERE Summit & Festival in Pasadena, CA, where we will be moderating a panel of escape room creators.

HERE is a 3-day event bringing together the trades of embodied experience design, weaving together practices and creators working in immersive theater, mixed reality, game design, theme parks, and escape rooms.

When you support us through Patreon at $5 per month or more, you’ll receive a peek at HERE from the Room Escape Artist perspective.

Support Room Escape Artist’s Mission

There are lots of ways to support Room Escape Artist, like buying from Amazon after clicking into the links included in this post or backing us on Patreon.

The money that we make from these helps us to grow the site and continue to add more value to the community that we love so much.

Unlock! Heroic Adventures [Review]

by David Spira, posted in Products, Reviews, Tabletop Escape Game, Unlock

Insert Coin, Sherlock Holmes, & White Rabbit

Location:  at home

Date Played: Q4 2019

Team size: 1-6; we recommend 2-4

Duration: 60, 60, & 90 minutes each

Price: about $25

REA Reaction

The Unlock! series has shifted from releasing 3 different one-off games to releasing all 3 games in one bundle. Instead of looking at each game in depth, I am going to explore all 3 at a higher level.

Unlock Heroic Adventures box art.

Insert Coin

This first installment was rooted in classic side-scrolling video gameplay. It did a lot of really clever things with level structure, which were super cool when we got them.

This was an unusual game that derived its charm from merging more traditional Unlock! puzzle play with classic video game tropes.

Sherlock Holmes – The Scarlet Thread of Murder

Unlock!’s take on Sherlock Holmes was a Victorian detective story that felt a lot like Unlock! had adapted Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective into a narrower, card- and art-driven game.

This was essentially gamified detective fiction, not a puzzle game.

If you’re into Sherlock Holmes fiction, there’s plenty to love. If you’re an escape room player who’s fatigued of the famed consulting detective, this is still executed better than most.

Pursuit of the White Rabbit

Pursuit of the White Rabbit was Unlock!’s interpretation of Alice in Wonderland. Like Unlock!’s Adventures in Oz, this was a narrative-driven game that didn’t require knowledge of the original story… but it sure did help a whole lot.

The game focused on exploring Through the Looking Glass logic, which was a fun mindset to settle into. It was plenty puzzley, but the logic was warped by the subject matter.

Overall Impression

I liked the Unlock! Heroic Adventures collection, but I didn’t love it. All of the games played about the same for me, solidly without being amazing. Each had some fantastic moments born out of the subject matter. Each had some intense logic leaps that felt under-clued.

These games kept some of the biggest problems with the Unlock! app under control by keeping the number of cards we had access to a little more limited, but the hint system needed more work. Also, the hidden number system has become so incredibly tired.

If you’re into tabletop escape rooms, there’s plenty to enjoy about this collection. If you’re an Unlock! fan, then you’re going to love this collection. The gameplay was solid, the stories were diverse, and the challenges reflected the narratives. I just wish that the creators of this series would address some of the shortcomings of their app and boost the cluing when they heavily deviate from the structure that they’ve establish in the instruction manual and tutorial game.

Who is this for?

  • Story seekers
  • Puzzle lovers
  • Tabletop gamers
  • Unlock! fans

Why play?

  • Unlock! pushed different gameplay boundaries with each game in this series
  • The unique art direction of each game was fantastic
  • Each game had strong moments that adapted the core concept of the inspirational subject matter into gameplay

Story

Insert Coin

Sucked into an arcade cabinet, we needed to defeat the final boss before we triggered a game over.

Sherlock Holmes – The Scarlet Thread of Murder

Sherlock Holmes was on another unusual case. While it was child’s play for the master detective, he figured we could learn something by solving it on our own.

Sherlock Holmes suspect map.

Pursuit of the White Rabbit

We followed Alice’s adventures through Wonderland, encountering many of the story’s most famous characters and solving the problems they threw in our path.

Setup

All Unlock! games dating back to the originals from 2017 have followed the same card-based gameplay supplemented by a mobile app. I explained this structure in detail in my original Unlock! review.

The key difference in the case of Heroic Adventures is that Space Cowboys decided to sell all three games from this release in a single bundle instead of à la carte.

Unlock Heroic Adventures box opened

Gameplay

Unlock!’s Heroic Adventures was a collection of card-based, play-at-home escape games with a moderate level of difficulty.

Core gameplay revolved around searching, observing, making connections, and puzzling.

Analysis

Insert Coin

➕ Unlock! finally tapped the app’s potential with an augmented reality component, which made us happy that the app was a part of this game.

➖ Early on, we struggled with some gating issues. We weren’t entirely sure what was in play. This improved later in the game, but it made for a bumpy start.

Insert coin initial setup.

➖ We found the font choice to be confusing for solving puzzles.

➕/➖ The structure of gameplay hearkened back to the source material… and stayed true to one classic reveal with an aha that video gamers will embrace. As nifty a reveal as it was, the setup led to some frustration, and will be especially confounding for those not familiar with the callback.

Sherlock Holmes – The Scarlet Thread of Murder

➕ Unlock! used their card-based structure to send us on an exploratory adventure, in the vein of Sherlock Holmes. We met characters to observe and interrogate, just as the famous consulting detective would. We enjoyed this twist in gameplay.

➖ We lost the thread of gameplay in a few instances by misinterpreting the suspects. It wasn’t always clear what we should know and what we shouldn’t.

Sherlock Holmes deck stacks.

➕ More than any other Unlock! game we’ve played to date, this one asked us to observe keenly. Observation became more interesting when it was extended beyond looking for hidden numbers. It was contextual, which led to satisfying solves.

➖ As with many of the Sherlock-themed games we’ve played, to succeed solving cases like the famous detective, we needed to make connections that felt tenuous, from a gameplay standpoint.

Pursuit of the White Rabbit

➕ Unlock! again tapped the app’s potential with an augmented reality component, born of the subject matter, that worked beautifully in this application.

➕ Unlock! used their typical game items more creatively in this scenario. They also introduced additional physical components that gave us more tangible solving opportunities, which we enjoyed.

Alice falling

➕ We enjoyed how Unlock! took classic moments from the source material and shrunk them into puzzles.

➖ With these enhancements, Unlock! broke some of their own rules… and hoped we could follow along. For the most part, we did, but additional cluing would help when they change things up.

➖ In the final scene, we started solving puzzles out of order. Additional cluing would help this segment play more smoothly and make more sense.

Tips For Players

  • Space Requirements: a small table 
  • Required Gear: a smartphone with the Unlock! app

Buy your copy of Unlock! Heroic Adventures, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Buy Heroic Adventures

Disclosure: Asmodee provided a sample for review.

Support Room Escape Artist’s Mission

There are lots of ways to support Room Escape Artist, like buying from Amazon after clicking into the links included in this post or backing us on Patreon.

The money that we make from these helps us to grow the site and continue to add more value to the community that we love so much.

The Conundrum Box – Christmas Seasonal Escape Room Box [Review]

by David Spira, posted in Products, Reviews, Tabletop Escape Game

‘Twas the month after Christmas and REA was catching up

Location:  at home

Date Played: January 11, 2020

Team size: 1-6; we recommend 2-4

Duration: 60 minutes

Price: about $89

REA Reaction

We have a stack of games from The Conundrum Box to play, but one of them stood out to us: the oversized one labeled, “Christmas Seasonal Escape Room.” We cut the box open and found an assortment of tiny, hand-wrapped gifts… and then this thing was bumped to the front of the review queue.

The Christmas Seasonal Escape Room delivered exactly what we wanted out of it: approachable puzzles, oodles of adorableness, and a final output that will thaw even the iciest of hearts.

While we think The Conundrum Box could have introduced more creative puzzles and further integrated the puzzling into the overall experience, the setup was undeniably special.

An assortment of bagged and wrapped christmas gifts.
How cute is this?

We aren’t usually people who enjoy small objects that don’t contribute significantly to the puzzling in our tabletop escape games… but the Christmas Seasonal Escape Room proved the exception to the rule.

This box is sold out. The Conundrum Box hasn’t announced plans for next year’s Christmas game, but based on my conversation with them, they will likely iterate on this concept next Christmas. If this sounds like your kind of a good time, keep your eye on their website for this and other seasonal games.

Who is this for?

  • The Christmas cheerful
  • Puzzle lovers
  • People who love physical objects in their tabletop puzzles
  • Any experience level

Why play?

  • Utterly lovable presentation
  • Straightforward, well-constructed puzzling
  • What you’re left with at the end
  • Holiday cheer

Story

A collection of beautifully wrapped, mysterious Christmas gifts arrived at our door.

The game's shipping box labeled, "Christmas Seasonal Escape Room Box"
The shipping box.

Setup

We cracked open the box and removed an assortment of wrapped gifts. Following the instructions we opened up a website that verified solutions and provided hints… and then we were off.

We puzzled through each gift sequentially. Getting started was straightforward.

An assortment of bagged and wrapped christmas gifts.
Seriously… isn’t this adorable?

Gameplay

The Conundrum Box’s Christmas Seasonal Escape Room Box was a standard play-at-home escape game with a lower level of difficulty.

Core gameplay revolved around puzzling and embracing the adorableness of this experience.

Analysis

➕ The Conundrum Box sent us a box full of wrapped gifts!

➕ It was easy to get started. Christmas Seasonal Escape Room Box opened with a straightforward puzzle that taught us how the gameplay worked – how to interact with the gifts and the website interface.

➖ The puzzles were functionally solid, but none of them were memorable. They felt pretty random. Although the props were Christmas-y, the puzzles themselves weren’t particularly thematic.

➖ The inconsistency in solution styles was bizarre. It made the puzzles feel like they didn’t belong to the same game.

➕ The Conundrum Box turned a collection of tchotchkes into a complete experience. This was an effective and meaningful way to make the items into far more than the sum of their parts.

➕ With each puzzle presented as a gift, the gating was especially fun. We could unwrap each new challenge in turn.

➕ The puzzle types were varied. We especially enjoyed the final puzzle, which was implemented such that it pulled all the components of the game together, and facilitated group participation.

End Game Spoiler

A tiny christmas tree with gifts gathered around it on a small table.
Surrender to the cuteness.

➕ We assembled a tiny Christmas tree!

[collapse]

Tips For Players

  • Space Requirements: a table
  • Required Gear: pencil, paper, and an internet-connected device
  • While not necessary, access to a wall outlet is recommended for optimal play conditions

Buy your copy of The Conundrum Box’s Christmas Seasonal Escape Room Box, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Buy Christmas Seasonal Escape Room Box

Disclosure: The Conundrum Box provided a sample for review.

Son of Doctor Esker’s Notebook [Review]

by Lisa Spira, posted in Products, Reviews, Tabletop Escape Game

Its father’s son.

Location:  at home

Date Played: November 24, 2019

Team size: 1-6; we recommend 2-3

Duration: 60 minutes

Price: about $15

REA Reaction

I’m going to give you a decision tree to answer the question, “Should I buy Son of Doctor Esker’s Notebook?”

The purple box for Son of Esker.
  • Did you play the original Doctor Esker’s Notebook?
  • Did you enjoy Doctor Esker’s Notebook?
    • If yes, continue on. If no, you can probably leave.
  • Do you want a 9-puzzle expansion pack for Doctor Esker’s Notebook?
    • If yes, buy now. If no, 👋
Buy Now

These are structurally the same game with different puzzles. For me, single biggest difference between Doctor Esker’s Notebook and Son of Doctor Esker’s Notebook was that I greatly preferred the final puzzle in the original. Beyond that, these games played identically and felt just as satisfying.

I enjoyed another dip into this particular pool, but my hope is that future installments will expand or change the gameplay and mechanics.

Who is this for?

  • Puzzle lovers
  • Players with at least some experience

Why play?

  • You liked the first Esker
  • Strong puzzles
  • The Esker solution input mechanism is still great

Story

As with the original Doctor Esker’s Notebook, Son of Esker didn’t have a noticeable plot line; it was a collection of puzzles.

10 stacks of cards with photographs and art on the back.
Each stack of cards contained the components for an individual puzzle.

Setup

Son of Esker was functionally identical to the original. There were 9 different puzzles presented as stacks of cards.

There was a 10th stack of cards used to assemble solutions. The solution to one puzzle pointed us to the next puzzle in the sequence.

If we needed hints, they were available via a website.

Closeup of a stack of cards that reads "Start"
What could this mysterious message mean?

Gameplay

Son of Doctor Esker’s Notebook was a challenging, puzzle-centric play-at-home escape game contained within a deck of cards.

An assortment of cards with a hand drawn map on the.
A glimpse of the first puzzle.

Analysis

See our original review. Our structural critiques apply to the sequel as well. The primary difference was that we didn’t encounter any learning curve problems the second time around, but that had more to do with us than it did the game.

➕ We truly enjoyed most of the puzzles.

❓ The leap in difficulty from the first to the second puzzle was substantial. While it was jarring, it wasn’t necessarily bad in the context of a sequel.

➖ One puzzle hit a sour note for us. Another graphic-heavy puzzle was bizarrely designed and had us wondering if we really were seeing what we saw.

➖ We didn’t love the final puzzle. It played with many of the same ideas as the final puzzle in the original, but the sequel’s conclusion wasn’t as friendly for group solves. It was a considerably more complicated logic puzzle and we found that it was better for a single solver to work on it in focused silence… which led to a quiet, solitary conclusion.

Tips For Players

  • Space Requirements: a small table or the floor
  • Required Gear: pen and paper

Buy your copy of Son of Doctor Esker’s Notebook, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Buy Son of Doctor Esker’s Notebook

Disclosure: Son of Doctor Esker’s Notebook provided a sample for review.

Support Room Escape Artist’s Mission

There are lots of ways to support Room Escape Artist, like buying from Amazon after clicking into the links included in this post or backing us on Patreon.

The money that we make from these helps us to grow the site and continue to add more value to the community that we love so much.

Unlock! – The Night of The Boogeymen [Review]

by David Spira, posted in Products, Reviews, Tabletop Escape Game, Unlock

A great bad dream

Location:  at home

Date Played: January 11, 2020

Team size: 1-6; we recommend 2-4

Duration: 60 minutes

Price: about $15

REA Reaction

The Night of The Boogeymen is as good as Unlock! and table top escape games have gotten for me so far. I loved playing this game… and we’re not going to give away our copy (like we normally do) because one day I’m going to forget the puzzles and I’ll replay it.

Unlock's The Night of the Bogeymen box art depicts a cartoonish child hiding under the covers from a monster with red glowing eyes under the bed.

The Night of The Boogeymen had a simple, relatable premise: to help a child suffering from bad dreams. Artistically, the cards struck a beautiful balance of creepiness and childishness that felt perfect for this setup. The gameplay knocked it out of the proverbial park by adding abstract dream like constraints that were regularly changing the feel and play style of the game.

All of this was underpinned by a more (but not entirely) linear narrative that kept the number of cards on the table from getting out of hand or feeling too restrictive (both of which regularly wreck Unlock! games for us).

I highly recommend Unlock! The Night of The Boogeymen. Space Cowboys took their standard formula and added the best kind of spin to it.

Who is this for?

  • Story seekers
  • Puzzle lovers
  • Any experience level

Why play?

  • A brilliant and engaging bad dream like mechanic
  • Story-driven gameplay
  • Adorable art

Story

Young William was haunted by monsters that went bump in the night. Four boogeymen stalked the dreams of the child. As the boy slept we had to banish these beasts from his mind.

A stack of player cards on the left, the card backs are covered with glowing red eyes beside a story card explaining that a child is being hauned by monsters at night.

Setup

Unlock! games all follow the same structure of card-based gameplay supplemented by a mobile app. I explained it in detail in our first Unlock! review back in 2017.

A card depicts a book holding a door closed.

Gameplay

Unlock! The Night of The Boogeymen was a story-driven, play-at-home escape game with a moderate level of difficulty.

Core gameplay revolved around searching, making connections, puzzling, and a little dexterity.

The first two chapter cards explain the nature of the Boogeymen

Analysis

➕ The story was simple, effective, and relatable.

➕ The art was great. It captured the look of childish imagined horrors. When we were finished, I found myself looking though the cards to make sure that I picked up on all of the details.

➕ I found the puzzling delightful. Plenty of challenges were simple and straightforward, but there were enough chewy, satisfying solves to keep it from feeling like all we were doing was plugging related objects together.

➖ One puzzle was conceptually brilliant, but we felt that it was a bit too tangled up in precision. It was far too easy to get it wrong, even after having figured out exactly what we needed to do.

➖ Another puzzle was poorly gated. It seemed like we had all of the necessary information to solve it… but after incurring a few time penalties we eventually realized that we needed a little more information.

➖/➕ I still have no love for the hidden number scavenger hunt in Unlock! games. It’s a weak mechanism. That said, I do appreciate that the app points these out, but still, we occasionally aren’t sure if we’ve found the particular hidden number referenced by the app.

➕ The monsters that we had to battle were fantastic – both as villains and as game mechanics. The constraints that came with facing these monsters transformed this from a game to an experience.

Tips For Player

  • Space Requirements: a small table 
  • Required Gear: a smartphone with the Unlock! app

Buy your copy of Unlock! The Night of The Boogeymen, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Buy The Night of The Boogeymen

Disclosure: Asmodee provided a sample for review.

Support Room Escape Artist’s Mission

There are lots of ways to support Room Escape Artist, like buying from Amazon after clicking into the links included in this post or backing us on Patreon.

The money that we make from these helps us to grow the site and continue to add more value to the community that we love so much.