The Morrison Game FactoryPostCuriousEscape roomTabletopWell, the story made me cry, so it’s got that going for it. We enjoyed the game: the puzzles are generally straightforward, they are cleanly clued, and the solutions make sense. There is a nice variety of puzzle types and a good use of “standard board game components” in clever ways. Not nearly as similar to “Box One” as I expected it to be. Did I mention that the story made me cry? Highly recommended.
Murder in the MafiaThinkFunEscape roomTabletopMy second favorite of the ThinkFun tabletop escape games (after the haunted dollhouse) but certainly the best in terms of the overall construction and variety of papercraft techniques. Decent puzzles (although sometimes things are a bit hard to see with old eyes) and high production values. The story is comically cliched in the sort of “Johnny Dangerously” version of the Mafia that one only finds in escape rooms, but they do a good enough job of keeping it interesting. Recommended.
The Fall Of The DawnstarEscape Room The GameEscape roomTabletopThis was our favorite game in the series of jigsaw puzzle / escape game mashups from Escape Room the Game. It had the best puzzles and story, and the sci-fi theme was a nice change of pace. There is less puzzle content in the scenes than the other games in the series, but this kind of gets made up for at the end with a final bonus puzzle, so keep the set together as you build it. The final main story puzzle is constructed in a way that I am very surprised they were able to pull off so cleanly with die-cut cardboard pieces. Recommended (note: we play these games with 2 and it seems unlikely that it would be fun with more than that).
The Medieval MishapHistory Mysteries [prev. Mini Mysteries Club]Escape roomTabletopAs with “The Egyptian Enigma,” the production values are excellent, from the voice acting to the props. This game is much more substantial than its predecessor, providing a series of puzzles that use lovely papercraft props (many are used multiple times). It’s fun to play them both but I would treat the Egyptian Enigma as the light appetizer and this game as the much more substantial main course. Still on the easy side and would still be good for playing with kids, but “The Medieval Mishap” has enough content to be worth the money. If you only play one of the two, this is the one to play. Recommended.
The Egyptian EnigmaHistory Mysteries [prev. Mini Mysteries Club]Escape roomTabletopGood production values: the website, voice acting, and props are all high quality. It’s really easy, so I would recommend this for solving with children. There’s nothing even remotely difficult for people who solve a lot of puzzles. But we had a nice time for 20 minutes. :) Playing this game by itself might be a bit of a disappointment, but if you get the two-pack and play both games, you’ll have gotten a full-length “escape room at home” experience. Recommended, but only with “The Medieval Mishap” as well. (Play this one first, because it is so short; if you play the other one first you’ll be disappointed by how quickly you finish this one, but if you treat this one as the appetizer I think you’ll enjoy the combo much more.)
AdriftPostCuriousEscape roomTabletopThis is a unique take on a puzzle-driven narrative. There are four “chapters,” playable in any order, each of which contains three poems, a piece of artwork, and a physical artifact. Poem one hides a message giving you a hint for how to interpret poem 2, which gives a hint for poem 3, which is combined with the artwork and the artifact to yield a final phrase “solving” that chapter. The four phrases together lead to the brief finale. Although the components are beautifully illustrated, there are some issues with the assembly (and disassembly) of the artifacts, particularly the ones involving cardboard. If you want to pass this on after playing you’ll have to be careful, although nothing in the game has to be written on or cut/folded, so that helps. We found the puzzles to be mostly solvable without hints, but one of the four chapters felt really underclued, and it is the one with the artifact that is the hardest to reconfigure, which is unfortunate. Anyway, if you like PostCurious games, you’ll almost certainly like this: despite the hiccups we felt it was a couple of hours well spent.
Sins of the FatherPuzzling Package Industries - OnlineEscape roomTabletopThe props are nicely done. The puzzles are trivially easy and there are not many. It takes longer to unpack everything and read the various documents than it does to solve the puzzles. I can’t in good conscience recommend this except maybe to someone looking to repurpose it for a tabletop RPG (where easy/quick prop-driven puzzles are usually a good fit).
Dungeons & Dragons: Bedlam in NeverwinterHasbroEscape roomTabletopFun for people who like D&D, fun for people who like story-driven board games, fun for people who like escape-room-esque puzzles in their D&D and board games. Surprisingly good production values considering the price, a respectable amount of content, and puzzles ranging from decent to quite good. The story is a little thin, but really, I have no substantive complaints. Recommended. (We played with 2; I didn’t investigate how the combat mechanics scaled with varying player counts, but we thought the combat encounters felt like they weren’t intended to put the players at too much risk of losing, which is probably what you want in a game like this.)
Never HouseDarkParkEscape roomTabletopOne of the best play-at-home escape rooms I have played. Worth buying just for the quality of the props, but we also enjoyed the story and puzzles. Played with 2 and I think that’s probably the right number.
The Charm of Christmas PastThe EscapementEscape roomTabletopThis is a charming play-at-home game with high-quality props and excellent audio narration. You’ll find a variety of puzzle types and difficulties; sometimes it takes longer to listen to the story than it does to solve the related puzzle, while other puzzles are more involved (one construction puzzle in particular is quite intricate and leaves you with a lovely object). It’s a sincere Christmas story, so don’t expect any wild Lovecraftian twists, but we enjoyed it. Recommended (note: we played this in the USA, but it ships from the UK, so if you really want to play it at the most appropriate time of the year, order it well in advance).
The Ghost in The AtticThe Mystery AgencyEscape roomTabletopThis was our favorite of the three (as of this writing) Mystery Agency games. High-quality props and a well-told story that uses the components in satisfying ways. I suppose the actual board game could have had a little more meat to it, but realistically one wouldn’t expect it to be a genuinely replayable thing on its own. Puzzles on the easy side, but we enjoyed this game very much. Recommended.
The Treasure Trove Of Pirate CoveSolve Our ShirtsEscape roomTabletopJust as clever as the first shirt … and arguably more clever because they couldn’t reuse any of the tricks! This one did feel a bit more like an online room that also happened to have a shirt as a prop than the first one did, but they still managed to make the shirt central to the experience and we were genuinely surprised and impressed by the finale. Highly recommended.
Secret Of The ScientistEscape Room The GameEscape roomTabletopThis was one of the earliest jigsaw puzzle / tabletop escape room mashups to hit the market, and it shows. Not the greatest puzzles and some things can be difficult to see in the artwork. The story is also just … weird. But, we had fun, and that’s the most important thing. I’d say their later efforts at this style of game are better, but this one isn’t awful.
Escape from the Overlook HotelThe Op Games │ Coded ChroniclesEscape roomTabletopI really liked the other Coded Chronicles game, “Scooby-Doo: Escape from the Haunted Mansion.” See my review of that one for details. I am putting this review here just to warn folks that this second game in the series has so many errors and omissions that we found it to be unplayable, even with generous recourse to BGG and the publisher’s website. At least one of the provided solutions is flat-out wrong (we didn’t bother finishing the game so I can’t say how many more of them are wrong, but we were ready to throw the box in a fire after slogging through the first two sections.) Do not recommend. Play the Scooby-Doo game instead, it’s good fun.
Escape From the Maze of the MinotaurSolve Our ShirtsEscape roomTabletopTremendously clever use of the shirt itself. I tried to guess how many different things they would be able to do with the shirt in advance … and I got about half of them. Highly recommended.
Box One By Neil Patrick HarrisTheory11 OnlineEscape roomTabletopTruly exceptional — a must-play for fans of escape rooms, puzzle hunts, and/or NPH. I am a fan of all three, so this was like catnip to me.
Scooby-Doo: Escape from the Haunted MansionThe Op Games │ Coded ChroniclesEscape roomTabletopI enjoyed this game a lot. It is a shame that the next game (“The Shining”) seems to have basically killed off the Coded Chronicles line as I thought that this style of game had a lot of potential. I would describe it as a cross between a tabletop escape room and a paragraph adventure board game (like “Tales of the Arabian Nights”). You combine a numeric prefix for an action type with a numeric value for the thing you want to interact with (thing on the map, object, character, etc.) and this tells you what to look up in the paragraph books. I felt they captured the art style and general nature of the Scooby-Doo characters well, the writing was good, the puzzles were better than I expected, and the story was about what you would expect from any episode of the cartoon. Recommended, but only this specific game: “The Shining” unfortunately has so many errors that it is unplayable. Play the Scooby-Doo game and pretend like the other one doesn’t exist.
Witchery SpellDarkParkEscape roomTabletopThis is still one of our favorite play-at-home mystery boxes of all time (and we play as many as we can get our hands on). Nice props, good puzzles, and an interesting story. Highly recommended.
Conspiracy-19DarkParkEscape roomTabletopNot as good as Witchery Spell or Never House but we still had fun playing this “escape room in a box” from DarkPark. The production values are high and both the online and offline props/resources are high quality.
