Hmm, any particular reason? I know some of the series 2 ones continue on, but hadn’t thought the first set had any particular connection.
Is it just puzzle difficulty? Or does it somehow ‘spoil’ the other games
Played two so far. One from the Escape the Room brand, which was fun but pretty easy, and then one from the Exit brand (The Secret Lab), which was pretty damn hard.
I’ve played a bunch of different boardgame escape room adaptations. I don’t think any of them are great substitutes for the real thing, but they can be interesting if you’re into puzzles in general.
Exit - This series is the best of these, IIRC we’ve done 4 so far, and we’ll get to all of them eventually. There’s lots of puzzle variety, and usually at least one puzzle that requires proper out of the box thinking. Solving some of the puzzles will in practice require destroying components. If you want to sell or give away the game, you’ll need some way of duplicating a few of the components. (E.g. photocopier, scanner/printer, or tracing the components through semi-transparent paper).
Unlock! - Kind of a strange system where you’ve got a deck of numbered cards. You can get new cards in three ways: find numbers hidden in the pictures of other cards you’ve found, adding up the numbers of a blue + red card (simulates using the red card on the blue), or some other cards that allow you to perform other arithmetic on the cards. So for example if there’s a card the number 7 (“key”) and number 5 (“locked drawer”), you could say you try to unlock the drawer with the key, and resolve the effects of that action by looking in the deck for card 7+5=12. There are some other methods to transform numbers as well.
Especially the bit with looking for hidden numbers is just a waste of time.
The box has three scenarios; the last one does a bit more with the system. The last one tries to play a bit more with the system, but I genuinely don’t know if they really can get very far with it. I believe there’s a print-and-play demo scenario available.
Deckscape - This is different from the other two in that you’re a) presented with specific questions to answer, b) can only try solving each puzzle once. The other systems try to come up with ways that allow you to verify your solution without finding out what the real one is. Here you just state your answer to one of the visible question cards, flip it over to read the answer from the backside, and take a time penalty if you got the answer wrong.
Some of the cards will give you persistent cards that can either contain clues (when you look carefully) or that can be used as part of the solution. “We found a crowbar earlier, now there’s a card asking us to open a locked door. Let’s just try using the crowbar on the door”.
The mix of puzzles is just all over the place. There’s a ton of them in each deck, so it’s not surprising that they can’t all be superb. But at least the “London” one had some real stinkers.
It’s not very satisfying overall. The main thing that seems to be good is that it’s somewhat suited for solitaire play thanks to the “you can just try answering once” mechanism. In the others if you get stuck and the hints don’t help, you’re stuck. And that’ll happen a lot easier for one person than when you have multiple perspectives.
Thanks for that expansive review of a wide range of options!
Just felt like more of a progression in difficulty to start with the cabin and end with the pharoah but it doesn’t spoil anything at all.
So I did my first escape room tonight. I didn’t choose the venue so I will still have to try the other ones in this thread but I thought it was awesome. It was like I was playing an adventure game in real life. I felt immediately at home in there. Now I need to hit google for some vr escape rooms which I’m sure exist.
Nothing quite as cool as a good room-escape.
they are quite a bit better than i thought they were going to be. We did an alchemists themed one and almost finished within the hour, but she let us finish naturally, we ended up getting 1 hour 4 minutes.
Man, they aren’t a replacement for the real thing, but the board game ones are quite enjoyable too.
The group I have gone with, we work together well. We’ve nearly set the all time record for the room each time. Usually missing by a minute or two. One of the things that my wife and I collaborate well together on, which isn’t all that common, really.
This thread’s original post caused me great confusion upon my first visit to a local escape room. It turned out it was a “find the hidden number(s)” to figure out the combination of the door to unlock a themed room. There was none of the role-play, active storytelling, lore or any gameplay that I was expecting.
Most room-escapes seems to follow a “theme”, they put you in a role. The last one I did made me take the role of “investigator” in a beer factory. Of course the gameplay was unlocking stuff, and find hidding tips.
If anyone ever winds up in Czechland and is into escape room stuff, this one should be pretty interesting, based and licensed on Kingdom Come
I’m guessing they just tell every group this, so they’ll keep coming back :D
Well in our case we check the scoreboards before we enter. We average about 35 minutes, so just saying :P
Our group here is similar actually. Though the last one we did, we got hung up on a puzzle and refused to ask for hints until we had about 10 min left. Turns out that my friend had reset this one puzzle accidentally and the bit we were missing relied on it being in its finished state. So we spun our wheels for about 15+ min trying to figure out something that couldn’t actually be solved. Annoying!
At its core there’s gonna be lots of puzzles, but some of them have fancy stuff… They have props so walls move and shit, been to one where there’s an actor zombie chained and if it touches you you die!
Too many code locks is the worst. Fiddling with them to put on the codes is a hassle, and it does take precious time.
I go with a stable group, and one guy just… brute forces combination locks, as in tries every combination. I feel this is cheating but it keeps him busy.
The confusion arises when I am not told, so I finally solve a puzzle and run into an already-opened box.
Is your friend a cyborg? how many combinations/second can try? O_O
He has brute forced more than one. I shake my head while staring at him when it happens. I disapprove because it’s against the spirit of the games while at the same time celebrating how unlikely this is.