Category: Products

Don’t shuffle in this casino.

Location: at home

Date Played: September 15, 2018

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

Duration: 60 minutes

Price: $10 per box

REA Reaction

Heist in Venice delivered fast-paced gameplay through aha puzzles. In one moment we were trying to figure out what was going on; in the next moment we’d solved that puzzle and moved on to the next one. That frenetic gameplay mixed with a the casino-heist theme and some unexpected plot twists created a fun at-home escape room.

We found Deckscape’s penalty system frustrating. A few puzzles felt either deliberately obtuse or accidentally underdeveloped… which was also how we felt about the previous two installments from Deckscape.

Over all, we recommend Heist in Venice. We found it slightly less interesting than Deckscape’s Test Time, and a lot better than The Fate of London. We look forward to Deckscape’s next edition.

Who is this for?

• Families
• Puzzle lovers
• Tabletop gamers
• Story seekers
• Any experience level

Why play?

• Lots of puzzles
• Some inventive puzzles
• Low price

Story

A mysterious stranger had blackmailed our retired heist crew into one final job. We had been summoned to Venice, Italy and forced to break into a casino vault to steal a €1,000,000,000 poker chip.

Setup

Heist in Venice followed Deckscape’s card-based and puzzle-centric gameplay, a structure established with their earlier games. We solved cards sequentially until the game instructed us to split the deck into multiple piles where each pile could be solved concurrently.

Playing Deckscape games doesn’t require players to write on or damage any components.

We detailed the structure in our previous Deckscape review:

Deckscape – Test Time & The Fate of London [Product Review]

Gameplay

Deckscape’s Heist in Venice was a puzzle-centric tabletop escape game with a varied level of difficulty.

Core gameplay revolved around puzzling and making connections.

Analysis

+ The mix of puzzles was fairly varied. Heist in Venice included inventive puzzles.

– Like with the previous Deckscape games, we found a couple of puzzles to be unfair.

+ Deckscape games tell a cohesive story. Heist in Venice followed suit.

+ Heist in Venice delivered playful art, story, and gameplay. The gameplay never felt dire; it didn’t take itself too seriously. Even the challenging puzzles felt approachable.

– As with the previous games, the penalty system felt punitive. It diminished the fun of the experience. There were a few gotcha moments that made us roll our eyes. Had we taken them seriously, they would have pissed us off.

+ There was a structured, self-service hint system with 1 hint for each puzzle. This worked for A Heist in Venice because most of the puzzles were aha puzzles. Normally I’d like to see more granularity in a hint system, but the 1-hint system felt fine for this game.

– Heist in Venice presented us with a blind choice; I wasn’t impressed with the pay off. This choice created a clash between the setup of the game and its conclusion.

+/- The character cards added an interesting twist and an unusual way to handle the problem of outside knowledge. Some of these interactions felt great; some seemed more flimsy.

+ The climax was amusing… and completely unexpected.

+ It’s easy to reset Heist in Venice to share it with other players. Nothing gets destroyed while playing. Resetting only requires stacking the cards in numerical order.

Tips for Playing

• Make sure that your deck is in sequential order and all cards are present before starting (especially if you’re playing with a secondhand copy).
• Don’t take the penalty system too seriously; you’ll have a more fun.

Purchase your copy of Deckscape’s Heist in Venice, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

“My name is Achilles Pussot and I am probably the second greatest detective in the world.”

Location: at home

Date Played: September 13, 2018

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

Duration: 1-2 hours

Price: $15 per box

REA Reaction

As a fan of the Exit: The Game series, Dead Man on the Orient Express has been one of my favorite installments. I enjoyed the puzzles and the way the difficulty mounted to an especially challenging final puzzle. This game deviated from some of the predictability of the past games.

At the same time, Dead Man on the Orient Express will not change anyone’s opinions on the series… and I’m hoping the creators will break more significantly from their patterns.

If you’re a fan of Exit: The Game, this is a must-buy. It’s one of their stronger installments. If you don’t like the series already, take a pass. If you’ve never played, I’d suggest getting started on one of their earlier games, as this one is tough.

Who is this for?

• Puzzle lovers
• Logic puzzlers
• Players with at least some experience with the Exit: The Game series

Why play?

• Some of the cleverest puzzles we’ve seen from Exit: The Game
• A fair difficulty curve
• A higher level of difficulty

Story

Based not so loosely on the Agatha Christie classic Murder on the Orient Express, Dead Man on the Orient Express cast us in the role of world-famous detective, Achilles Pussot. A man had been killed on the train and there were eight suspects. We needed to identify the killer before the train reached its destination in Constantinople.

Setup

Dead Man on the Orient Express was structurally identical to all of the previous Exit: The Game installments that we have reviewed.

This was a paper-based game with a booklet, a few decks of cards, a solution wheel, and a pair of card stock “strange items.”

Exit: The Game installments are destructible. I’m sure it would be possible to preserve the game for replay by other players, but I don’t think it would be worth the effort.

For a more in-depth explanation of the game mechanics of the Exit: The Game series, give our original review a read:

Exit: The Game – The Abandoned Cabin, The Secret Lab, & The Pharaoh’s Tomb [Review]

Gameplay

Exit: The Game’s Dead Man on the Orient Express was a typical play-at-home escape game with a murder mystery twist.

Core gameplay revolved around searching, detailed observation, deduction, and puzzling.

Analysis

+ The puzzles in Dead Man on the Orient Express were generally satisfying. They had a comfortable difficulty curve and became pretty challenging.

+ This game captured the Agatha Christie murder mystery vibe while keeping the gameplay firmly in puzzle-game territory. We were puzzlers, not detectives.

– Because so much of the game was in a booklet, the gameplay bottlenecked. The cabin cards and puzzle cards helped to distribute the gameplay, but the booklet still boxed players out of the fun. (Teams of 1 or 2 people won’t have this issue.)

? The final logic puzzle was especially challenging. We were impressed with the twist on traditional logic puzzling cluing. This puzzle also required an attention to detail that exceeded the level of commitment that we were mentally prepared for. If you haven’t paid attention throughout the entire gameplay, this will be brutal. In our opinion, this was the most complicated puzzle that we’ve seen from the series. Whether this is great or terrible is up to you.

– The final puzzle hinged on some details that were a little too difficult to perceive with confidence. This was on-theme for the material, but also felt a little unfair.

+ The art and style of Dead Man on the Orient Express was consistent and elegant.

– Speaking as a fan of the Exit: The Game series, I respect that they deviate slightly from their formula in each game. With 9 installments in-market, however, I find myself wishing that they would change things up a lot more.

+ The hint system was useful and predictable. I would like a bit more granularity, but Exit: The Game’s hint system is still the most comprehensive of the multi-installment series released by large game publishers.

Tips for Playing

• You have to destroy the components to play this game. Embrace it.
• The train cabin components are double sided. Be aware of that.
• The final puzzle was, in our opinion, the toughest puzzle in the Exit: The Game series. Take that one seriously.

Pickup your copy of Exit: The Game – Dead Man on the Orient Express, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: Thames & Kosmos provided a sample for review.

(If you purchase via our Amazon links, you will help support Room Escape Artist as we will receive a very small percentage of the sale.)

Dinner & a murder

Location: at home

Date Played: September 15, 2018

Team size: 4-8; we recommend 4

Duration: 120 minutes

Price: $29.99

REA Reaction

Murder at the Paisley’s brought a light-hearted murder dinner puzzle game to our dining room table. While largely paper-based, it incorporated some tangible prop-based interactions and offered more puzzle depth than many other at-home escape rooms.

Visually, Murder at the Paisley’s wasn’t all that purdy, but this was more than made up for in gameplay quality.

If you’re looking for a small-group tabletop escape room, we recommend Murder at the Paisley’s.

Who is this for?

• Puzzle lovers
• Any experience level

Why play?

• Interesting puzzles
• Tabletop escape game meets mystery dinner structure
• Approachable and family-friendly

Story

The Paisley family loved entertaining friends and neighbors on their large farm. We were visiting for dinner when one of the Paisleys was found dead. We had to solve the murder mystery.

Setup

Murder at the Paisley’s arrived in a cardboard box containing a collection of sealed envelopes and some printed materials. We logged into their web interface, where we would receive additional audio context and submit solutions.

The materials of the game were clearly handmade, mostly out of paper, with a creative use of cotton balls, and some farm-related toys thrown in for more tangible interactions.

Gameplay

Cypher House Escape’s Murder at the Paisley’s was a tabletop escape game with a moderate level of difficulty.

Each player received a character envelope with some special items, secret information, and character traits for groups that want to roleplay throughout the game. (We didn’t roleplay.)

Murder at the Paisley’s played out in two parts: a warm-up dinner party puzzle followed by a more in-depth puzzle investigation. There was a scheduled intermission between the two stages should the organizer want to actually serve dinner.

The puzzles were largely paper-based, but included the occasional more tangible components.

Core gameplay revolved around listening, reading, making connections and puzzling.

Analysis

+ We enjoyed the structure: We played a warmup puzzle to get to know the mechanics and the characters. We had the option to break for dinner. Then the real mystery unraveled.

+ Murder at the Paisley’s offered a lot of puzzle content.

+ The puzzles took standard concepts, but offered unique twists. The clue structure was clear and the puzzles solved cleanly.

+ The puzzles were thematically appropriate.

– At times, the puzzle components didn’t fit together as neatly as they should. Cypher House Escape could use tighter tolerances when designing interrelated components.

+ The tchotchkes mattered. They were part of the puzzles.

– The puzzles were not narrative-driven. They didn’t really make sense in the context of solving the murder.

– While the gameplay was high quality, aesthetically Murder at the Paisley’s felt homemade and unrefined when compared with many of their competitors.

+ All instructional and background content was available to read or listen to. We could choose or do both.

+ Cypher House Escape merged tabletop escape game with murder mystery dinner, giving us each a role in the staging and additional knowledge that would come into play later as clue structure.

– Although we liked the character concept, it could use refinement. The secret information felt a bit hokey. If you play with more than 4 players, you’ll find the characters to be unbalanced. A couple of them seemed like filler content.

+ This was an adorable, family-friendly murder mystery.

Tips for Playing

• Keep track of your solutions on the sheet provided.
• It was easier to use a computer than a phone for the website interactions, but Murder at the Paisley’s could be played with either.
• There is a built-in pause for dinner, should you choose to make an evening of the game.

Purchase your copy of Cypher House Escape’s Murder at the Paisley’s, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: Cypher House Escape sent us a complimentary reviewer’s copy of this game.

Holmes could have solved this one.

Location: at home

Date Played: January, 2018

Team size: up to 5 people; we recommend 2

Duration: 90-120 minutes

Price: $20

REA Reaction

Unfinished Case of Holmes was a paper-based play-at-home puzzle game with a companion app that facilitated story, hint, and player progression.

While the app wasn’t fully translated into English and the hint system left something to be desired, this affordable game offered a variety of puzzles and some fun twists on more common puzzle types.

Unfinished Case of Holmes wasn’t a must-play, but if you’re into puzzle games, it would absolutely be worth a play through . Give this one a shot on a rainy day.

Who is this for?

• Puzzle lovers
• Any experience level

Why play?

• It’s affordable
• Some interesting puzzles

Story

Sherlock Holmes had left this case unsolved. We stepped in to investigate a mysterious death.

Setup

Unfinished Case of Holmes included a collection of paper-based puzzles and an app interface.

Gameplay

Unfinished Case of Holmes solved linearly, guided by an app.

For each puzzle, the app delivered narrative context and informed us which puzzle components to rely on. We could also take hints through the app. The puzzles came together through the printed components we’d received in the mail.

Analysis

+ iDventure printed on quality paper stock.

+ Each individual component was deliberately designed.

+ There was a good variety of interesting and challenging puzzles. Although primarily paper based, iDventure created interactive pieces. Unfinished Case of Holmes didn’t feel like homework worksheets.

+ The puzzles offered more depth than we’ve come to expect from paper-based play-at-home games. We appreciated the layered challenges that we could sink our teeth into, but still solve, as a series, in one play through.

– Although the puzzles were complex, if we got far enough, the solutions were brute-forceable. We could narrow down possible solutions and guess a few times until we found the right answer. (The app punished hints, but not incorrect guesses.)

– The punitive hint system wasn’t adaptive enough. At one point, we needed to take three hints before we received any helpful information. (The first two only gave us information we’d already deduced.) The app deducted time for each of these three hints, which felt unnecessarily punitive, especially since we’d figured so much out on our own.

– Some of the app’s interface had not been translated into English (which isn’t an issue if you read German).

+ Unfinished Case of Holmes was an affordable, worthy opponent.

Tips for Playing

• For the Amazon version, iDventure sells two modes for Unfinished Case of Holmes: Expert and Standard. According to their website, “expert mode is with less tips and suitable for people with more experience with Escape Room games.”
• iDventure also offers a downloadable version that requires more set up time.
• We played the Amazon version in Expert mode.
• For any version, you will need to download the app (available for IOS and Android) and have an internet connection.

Purchase iDventure’s Unfinished Case of Holmes, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

(If you purchase via our Amazon links, you will help support Room Escape Artist as we will receive a very small percentage of the sale.)

Piece of mind.

Location: at home

Date Played: August 7, 2018

Team size:  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯; we recommend 1-2

Duration:  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Price: $25 for each monthly installment with a month-to-month subscription, $63 for a 3-month subscription, $114 for a 6-month subscription, $204 for an annual subscription

REA Reaction

The Gray Matter Sodality was a monthly subscription puzzle game. Each monthly package had us solving a single layered puzzle in search of a segment of Albert Einstein’s brain (not kidding).

The story was as humorous as it was clever. The narrow puzzling was kind of refreshing… when it worked well. Unfortunately, The Gray Matter Sodality was hamstrung by issues with puzzle ambiguity, requirements for unusual gear, and an aggressively high price tag.

Who is this for?

• Puzzle lovers
• Players seeking a limited and focused puzzle experience
• Any experience level

Why play?

• Fantastic setup
• Narrow, focused puzzling

Story

When Albert Einstein passed away in 1955, pathologist Thomas Harvey extracted the brain of history’s most famous physicist without permission. Harvey ultimately persuaded Einstein’s son Hans Albert to allow him to keep the brain, under the condition that it would be used for scientific research. After decades of keeping the brain in a jar, Harvey dissected Einstein’s brain into 240 blocks and 1,000 microscopic slides, distributing them to researchers around the world. (This is a true story, by the way.)

We were recruited by an international organization dedicated to reclaiming and reassembling the scattered pieces of Einstein’s deconstructed gray matter.

Setup

The Gray Matter Sodality sent us monthly envelopes with a letter and some clues to find the location of a piece of Al’s brain. (This review is based on a sample of 3 installments.)

Each envelope contained a few pieces of paper and a key prop like a deck of cards or a cassette.

We also frequently needed to find or acquire other items to solve some of these puzzles.

When we solved the episode’s puzzle, we submitted the solution (the location of the brain fragment) to a website to confirm and complete the challenge.

Gameplay

The Gray Matter Sodality was a monthly mailing with one layered puzzle per envelope. The level of difficulty and time commitment to solve varied broadly across episodes.

Core gameplay revolved around observing, making connections, puzzling, and finding the right tools to solve a challenge.

Analysis

+ Turning the real life story of the dissection and dissemination of Albert Einstein’s brain into the basis for an episodic puzzle game was &%^*ing inspired. It’s one of those ideas where I am confident that there will be many other creators wishing that they had come up with it.

+ We really appreciated the focused nature of The Gray Matter Sodality. After playing some massive multi-month subscription games with multi-hour playtimes, backtracking, and lots of information to parse, it was relaxing to open up a small package, find a few items, and know that they all tied to a single puzzle.

+ The Gray Matter Sodality‘s puzzles had a few layers, so while each installment may have been one puzzle, there was some depth.

– The need for some unusual gear ranged from annoying to infuriating. We were able to get around some of this via free iPhone apps, but one required the real thing…

– Some of the cluing felt incomplete. After we solved the main challenge of one puzzle, we spent 15 minutes guessing because there was a shocking amount of ambiguity in deriving the actual solution.

+ The month 7 cards & dice puzzle was really clever.

? The production value was fine. Nothing terrible, but nothing special or visually impactful.

– The variability of commitment was too broad. We solved one of these episodes in less than 10 minutes, another in about 25 minutes… but a lot of it was filling in a cluing gap, and the last one took about an hour. The expectation setting wasn’t great.

+/- There wasn’t a self-service hint system. Despite this drawback, we received prompt email responses to any hint requests (even when we used a friend’s email address.) We don’t know how well this will work for people in diverse time zones.

– The Gray Matter Sodality was too expensive. There wasn’t a lot to it. It was mostly printer paper, toner, and postage. Personally, I find it difficult to justify $25 for a 10-minute puzzle. The production value and puzzle quality didn’t do anything to help justify the price tag. Even the $17 per package (if you subscribe for a year) seems a bit steep based on the three episodes that we played.

+ After speaking to someone who has subscribed to more episodes from The Gray Matter Sodality, I’ve heard that there is at least one better puzzle in another mailing that we didn’t receive. I’m glad to hear that there’s a bit more depth.

Tips for Playing

• The mailings are not fully self-contained. You will need to buy or find additional equipment to solve some of these puzzles.
• Because the installments are focused, The Gray Matter Sodality is really only a 1-2 person activity.

Order your subscription to The Gray Matter Sodality, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: The Gray Matter Sodality provided a complementary reviewer’s sample of three mailings.

(If you purchase via our Cratejoy links, you will help support Room Escape Artist as we will receive a very small percentage of the sale.)

Off the rails.

Location: at home

Date Played: August 4, 2018

Team size: 1-6; we recommend 2-3

Duration: 60 minutes

Price: $14.99

REA Reaction

Unlock! is branching out and experimenting with the tabletop escape game format. In their most recent batch, this has had mixed results ranging from the fantastic Adventures of Oz to the interesting yet confounding Noside Story. Tombstone Express took even more risks and pushed the boundaries of what Unlock! can offer… and it went off the rails.

The puzzling was weak and infrequent. We had access to so many cards at once that it was tough to have any idea of what was going on, let alone what was important.

The creators of Unlock! were playing with a lot of interesting ideas, but they didn’t come together cohesively. Play Tombstone Express because it’s experimental and unusual. If that doesn’t interest you, then you can comfortably skip this episode in the series.

Who is this for?

• Story seekers
• People who are open to experimental narrative tabletop gaming
• Players who really love the Unlock! series
• Best for players with at least some experience with the Unlock! series

Why play?

• Narrative-driven gameplay
• It’s different and unique

Story

The year was 1890 and we had to protect a US marshal bearing a precious gem that could seal a peace treaty with the Apache nation. Our train was an hour away from our destination in Tombstone, Arizona.

Setup

The basic game mechanics of Tombstone Express were functionally identical to the earlier Unlock! games that we reviewed. Those mechanics are described in detail in our earlier review:

Unlock! Escape Adventure – The Formula, The Island of Doctor Goorse, and Squeek & Sausage [Review]

The key difference in Tombstone Express was that it focused heavily on narrative, with the app time-releasing events, and the core game mechanics being used more to facilitate narrative than puzzle play.

Gameplay

Unlock!’s Tombstone Express was an unusual tabletop escape room with a high level of difficulty. Much of the challenge stemmed from wrangling all of the Unlock! rules along with the massive number of active cards.

Core gameplay revolved around searching, managing cards, and puzzling.

Analysis

+ The folks behind Unlock! have made an interesting decision to morph the series away from pure escape room style play and use the series to tell stories.

+ Tombstone Express put an interesting spin on the red card + blue card game mechanic.

– Tombstone Express rapidly descended into madness. We quickly reached a point where we had more than 20 cards in play, which was paralyzing. There was too much going on.

– With so many cards in play, the Unlock! hint system, which wasn’t amazing under the best of conditions, became almost useless. It turned into a guessing game as to which cards were even relevant to take a hint on.

– As Unlock! introduces more features, I wish that they would do a better job of setting expectations and explaining new ideas in the intro or tutorial. Their old tutorial doesn’t cut it for the newer, more narrative-driven games.

– Unlock!’s penalty system continued to feel random and punitive.

+ Using the app to time-release events was a creative twist that made the software feel relevant and important.

– Some of these time released events were annoying time wasters… and the bullet game mechanic was pretty lame.

– There weren’t many puzzles; the puzzles that were present were weak.

+ Case-solving was a nifty endgame.

– Deriving the correct solution wasn’t necessarily a given. We only got one guess. If we screwed up, we automatically failed, ending the game immediately. There was no way to see the correct solution or the proper case deduction without replaying the entire game. It was a pretty sour ending.

+ Tombstone Express had beautiful card art.

Tips for Visiting

• Inspect everything for hidden numbers.
• Be sure to keep a close eye on which cards are in play and which cards should be discarded. A single lapse in this can wreak some havoc.

Pickup a copy of Unlock!’s Tombstone Express, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: Full disclosure: Asmodee sent us a complementary reviewer’s copy of this game.

(If you purchase via our Amazon links, you will help support Room Escape Artist as we will receive a very small percentage of the sale.)