Category: 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.

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.

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.

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

➕ 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.

Disclosure: The Conundrum Box provided a sample for review.

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?”

• Did you play the original Doctor Esker’s Notebook?
  • If yes, continue on. If no, consider buying the original before trying the sequel.
• 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, 👋

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.

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.

Gameplay

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

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.

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.

“With Interactive Ending” 🤔

Location:  at home

Date Played: January 11, 2020

Team size: 2+; we recommend 2

Duration: 60 minutes (in theory)

Price: about $20

REA Reaction

Talking Tables’ Host Your Own Escape Room was not designed for us. If you’re a regular reader of Room Escape Artist, we can pretty much guarantee that it wasn’t made for you either. This game feels like light entertainment for adults who don’t play or puzzle much.

Host Your Own Escape Room looked good, but it didn’t have much of anything going on beyond its elegant production.

Including setup time, we finished Host Your Own Escape Room in 20 minutes. There was a light searching component and approximately 3 puzzles (depending upon your definition of puzzle), all of which were incredibly common and basic puzzle types.

That isn’t to say that they were bad (except for the one that demanded a bit of outside knowledge). The puzzles were cleanly executed. However, there simply wasn’t much to it.

Creators in the escape room world are making so many delightful and creative games. Host Your Own Escape Room simply wasn’t representative of where this medium is moving.

Who is this for?

People who want to enjoy the faintest whiff of an escape room from the comfort of their own home.

Why play?

• The 3 puzzles all solve cleanly
• High production value

Story

We were trapped inside of a cinema in Tokyo.

Setup

A host is supposed to open the box, read the rules, and hide a few items in a room within their home.

Once the guests are in the room, said host reads a brief introduction to the setting and so begins the game.

The host can play with the group, provided they didn’t solve the puzzles in advance. They just have to hold back on searching (and maybe provide searching hints if they hid items too well or their friends are lazy searchers.)

If the team requires hints or solutions to any of the puzzles, the instruction booklet contains them in the last few pages.

Gameplay

Talking Tables’ Host Your Own Escape Room was a standard play-at-home escape game with a low level of difficulty.

Core gameplay revolved around searching and puzzling.

Analysis

➕ For $20, the production value of Host Your Own Escape Room was impressive. All of the materials looked great. They had an elegant red, black, and white aesthetic that demonstrated that someone really cared about the presentation of this game.

➕ The option and instructions for adding a search component into the game were well executed.

➖ The story was only thematically relevant.

➕ The puzzles within this game all solved cleanly, and pulled from Japanese culture and puzzle design.

➖ The puzzles were all common puzzle types without much of a twist.

➖ A large volume of the objects within this game had no purpose other than to look thematic. It’s a shame that these components weren’t worked into the gameplay at all.

➖ One puzzle required outside knowledge.

➖ The phrase, “with interactive ending” literally meant that we needed to use a web browser in the most basic way possible.

➕ Host Your Own Escape Room came with a beefy notepad. It was hilariously large for this game. We’ve kept it and will be using it for some time.

Tips For Players

• Space Requirements: a room with a door and a small table
• Required Gear: an internet-connected device, paper and pencil (or pen if you like to live dangerously)

Buy your copy of Talking Tables’s Host Your Own Escape Room, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: Talking Tables 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.

Who wants to save the %#(@ world?

Location:  at home

Date Played: October 2019

Team size: Unlimited; we recommend 1-2

Duration: Variable; probably 2-3 hours

Price: Free

REA Reaction

So You Wanna Save the World is envisioned as a monthly puzzle subscription service intended to replicate the feel of playing an escape room. The monthly package hasn’t launched yet, but this free prequel episode offers a taste of what the creators have in mind.

Considering the online setting, Episode 0 felt a lot like a puzzle hunt, but with more of a story focus. The secret agency backstory provided a clever meta-explanation for the physical mailer format. Using websites, videos, and phone calls upped the fun factor.

The gameplay itself felt uneven at times, as some moments of insight came significantly more easily than others. Trial and error played a role as we determined which components fit together. The puzzles ranged from delightfully challenging to frustratingly opaque.

The tone of So You Wanna Save the World was edgy bordering on aggressive. Players who prefer a more welcoming, supportive atmosphere should probably look elsewhere.

So You Wanna Save the World made big promises of being cinematic and game-changing. Episode 0 delivered a slick and entertaining game, but with some rough edges. Producing fun, balanced content every month isn’t easy, but with lots of playtesting, future installments could live up to those promises.

Who is this for?

• Story seekers
• Puzzle lovers
• Players with at least some experience

Why play?

• The puzzles
• The edgy, roguish vibe
• To banter with a smart-mouthed AI

Story

We had been recruited by the Mail Marshals, a secret government agency embedded inside the post office. Two Mail Marshals agents, along with an experimental AI, provided evidence and secret messages for us to decipher in order to prove our worth and catch the bad guy.

Setup

So You Wanna Save the World used websites, phone numbers, and videos to present a series of puzzles enmeshed in a secret agent story. An online account saved our progress in a Case Notes section, complete with writeups of our progress so far. We could confer with other players via the Recruit Network (a Facebook group) if we needed help.

In future installments of So You Wanna Save the World, each episode will start with a physical mailing sent to players’ home addresses. This introductory episode began with a digital version of one of these mailers.

Gameplay

So You Wanna Save the World: Episode 0 was an online puzzle game with a high level of difficulty. Core gameplay revolved around observation and cracking codes.

The puzzles varied in difficulty and usually involved aha moments. This meant some puzzles took just a few moments to figure out and others took far longer.

The puzzles were presented in tandem with a story about the case we were working on. The tasks mostly emerged authentically from the story and the puzzle’s medium (video, audio, or graphic).

Analysis

➕ So You Wanna Save the World integrated websites, phone calls, and physical mailings. The puzzles felt natural in all of these habitats.

➕/➖ The website, videos, and other materials went a long way towards making the experience immersive. The production value was slick and professional, but the characters lacked a sense of urgency. We found ourselves wishing the videos had expressed the intensity that saving the world would ostensibly require.

➖ Our interactions with Tachyon, our AI helper, were persnickety. We sometimes had to experiment to find the specific wording that would get her to react. When she didn’t understand, she berated us with insults that quickly became repetitive.

❓ Speaking of Tachyon…So You Wanna Save the World was explicitly not for children. The cursing was gratuitous and unabashed, and the story included descriptions of violence. This may limit the potential audience somewhat, particularly for families interested in puzzling together.

➕/➖ So You Wanna Save the World presented bonus evidence and Easter eggs concurrently with the main storyline. We enjoyed searching for the extra hidden content. At times the bonus puzzles stood out more than the ones on the main branch of gameplay, so we accidentally forked away without realizing. Further playtesting might help even out the difficulty of the branches.

➕/➖ Solving puzzles and determining which components to combine often required trial and error. Many of the stand-alone puzzles provided satisfying moments of insight. When we needed to choose which clues fit together to make progress, the lack of structure made things more challenging, and occasionally frustrating.

➖ Because we didn’t know what style or caliber of puzzle to expect, we had trouble getting our bearings at first. We spent almost an hour on the first puzzle before the insight necessary to solve it dawned on us. An easier start or some form of onboarding would give players a better idea of what sort of challenge awaited.

➕ The Case Notes section of the website recorded our progress and included recaps of previous puzzles. This helped us keep our findings straight and reorient ourselves after stepping away from the game. The Case Notes also helped show how a puzzle was solved when we weren’t quite sure how we’d done it.

➖ The first-person format of the Case Notes became jarring when the notes expressed attitudes opposed to my own. Late in the game, Recruit Willson praised a character whose actions I would never support in real life. Seeing my actual name on this entry was unsettling. A more neutral stance in the notes would preserve immersion.

➕/➖ The Facebook group was a creative in-game way to get hints. It was tricky to describe where we were stuck, since the puzzles weren’t linear or explicitly named. The other recruits’ posts were helpful, though we had to dodge spoilers for puzzles we hadn’t reached yet. Also, the group could become more or less useful in the future as the community grows or shrinks.

➕ The Mail Marshals backstory explained the purpose of the physical mailer components cleverly. Episode 0 started online instead of via snail mail, but searching through actual junk mail for secret messages in future episodes sounds like fun.

Tips for Playing

So You Wanna Save the World: Episode 0 requires an internet connection and a US phone number. A pencil and paper will come in handy, but otherwise you don’t need any special equipment.

Playing alone or with one companion seems ideal, since the puzzles aren’t particularly collaborative. If you typically like approaching puzzle hunts and similar games solo, try this one by yourself.

And ignore Tachyon when she tells you you’re a useless $*@%. You’ll show her.