If you’re not familiar with the Unlock series of games, they’re cooperative card- and app-based puzzle games, where you race to achieve some objective in a limited amount of time, somewhat in the style of escape rooms.
As with the majority of the Unlock boxes, Unlock: Game Adventures includes 3 separate ‘adventures,’ i.e., 3 separate card decks based around different boardgame themes: Ticket to Ride (rated easy), Mysterium (moderate), and Pandemic (hard).
Pick a deck, read its top card to find out what the mission is, and…
Actually, rewind a little: if you’ve never encountered an Unlock game, the box includes a short tutorial (10 cards)—play that first to get used to the card and app mechanics.
Playing the Game
In Unlock games, you have a deck of 60 numbered (some have letters) cards of various types:
- The starting card—in other Unlock titles, this tells you what your mission is, but here it merely gives a little background, leaving you to figure out your objective as you play;
- Objects (actually, some might be people or locations, but they’re termed ‘objects’ for the purpose of explanation)—these have red or blue jigsaw piece icons in the corner, and the idea is that you combine the appropriate pair of objects by summing their card numbers to get the number of the next card to look at (the example in the rulebook is a locked cabinet, card number 35 with a red piece graphic, and a key, card 11 with a blue graphic; adding those together points you at card 46, an open cabinet with something important inside);
- Modifiers—these interact with objects to adjust the final sum;
- Machines—typing the card number into the app opens a mini game to play in order to make progress, usually making use of information on other cards;
- Codes—similar to machines, these require the app, but this time just typing in a 4-digit code, which you’ll have to find elsewhere;
- Pandemic includes Character cards, representing the various roles in Pandemic proper;
- Other—these might be locations which point you directly to another set of cards (i.e., items at that location) or hidden clues (helping you deal with machines and codes, or sneakily identifying other cards); and
- Penalty cards—if you take a stab in the dark with object pairs, sometimes you end up taking a wrong turn down a dark alley, getting rewarded with a penalty card, costing you time in the game. (Machines similarly punish wrong guesses with time penalties.)
The Pandemic adventure also makes use of a map, which you shouldn’t open until told to, and a handful of cubes to place on it.
The other main component is the associated phone app. You load the app, select the game box and the adventure you want to play, and after you’ve read the initial card, hit the start button.
The app immediately starts counting (down from 60 minutes for Ticket to Ride; down from 70 for Pandemic and up from zero in Mysterium). It doesn’t matter hugely if you don’t finish the game within the allotted time, as the app keeps on a-counting; it just affects your final rating.
Besides counting time and providing the mechanism for codes and machines, the app can sometimes spontaneously give you a clue—I’ve not investigated, but it might be when it reckons it’s been too long since you last touched the app. It also provides atmospheric background music and sound effects.
You turn over the starting card, which gives you instructions on what to do next, often including the numbers of the next bunch of cards to look at (though not necessarily in an obvious manner), and off you go.
I won’t say anything specifically about the game to avoid giving spoilers, but here are a few generic pointers:
- Examine the cards closely including the backs—very closely as some contain multiple clues;
- Prepare to think laterally about the app—if something offers you a camera, take pictures, or if there’s something that needs to be mixed, shake it up;
- Be prepared to repeat some actions—sometimes you have to keep asking the same question or visiting the same location; and
- Use the app’s hint mechanism if you’re completely stuck!
If you haven’t given up in despair, the game ends when you solve the puzzle on the final card, but I did feel this was a bit anticlimactic. Actually, I lied slightly there: one of the adventures (I won’t say which) ends with something other than cards, and which I needed to use a hint to find because I was so fixated on just the cards; but it was very cleverly done so I 100% forgive the game designers. The app says you’ve reached your objective, offering a few stats (such as time taken, number of hints requested, and so on) which you probably aren’t all that interested in because the only important thing is that you ‘escaped,’ right? I would have liked a bit more fanfare, but still, playing the game was enjoyable.
Wrap Up
Since I like all three of the boardgames, I love the theming here; the puzzles are a mix of obvious and brain-taxing and mesh really well with the original games. True, you don’t have to be familiar with the boardgames, but it helps—a few of the puzzles really lean in to the mechanisms of the game they’re based on. Conversely, if you’re not a fan of the games, this particular Unlock might not be to your taste, and you could be better off starting elsewhere. The use of the app is inventive, very clever in places. I also liked the hints mechanism, to avoid total frustration and toss-the-table meltdown.
The box does say the game suits up to 6 players, but I think the upper end of that is just too many. While there can be several puzzles being tackled in parallel, there aren’t enough to keep everyone occupied, and you’ll likely be fighting for use of the phone. I feel that 2 or 3 players is optimal, though all but one of the adventures are readily playable solo. That remaining one requires a player to read a clue and communicate the information on it to the others, which is kind of tricky on your lonesome, something I feel should have been made clear on the box.
Unlike other escape-style games, such as the Exit series, nothing is destroyed while playing the game, so although it’s not particularly replayable (you’ll remember too much!), at least it can be passed on to someone else when you’re done.
One small criticism I have of the game is that the box is too big. Since the game is ‘just’ cards (and some cubes and a map), it could be made a lot smaller and more portable, ideal for travel.
Postscript
This is my clear favourite of the half dozen or so examples of Unlock games that I’ve played, thanks to the brilliant way the original boardgames are integrated into the puzzles. I see that Unlock: New Games Adventures is coming later this year, based on Heat, 7 Wonders and Carcassonne; since I like 2 of those games (I haven’t played the other yet), it’s sitting waiting on my wishlist!
Ratings
- Overall score of 95/100.
- Artwork: 5/5
- Complexity: 3/5
- Replayability: 1/5
- Player interaction: 3/5
- Component quality: 5/5
Likes
- Nice variety of inventive puzzles
- Clever app
- Great theming
Dislikes
- I don’t think I have anything to complain about, within the constraints of this genre of game
About the author
Current favourite boardgames are Ark Nova and Paleo, with a side of Terraforming Mars and Rebirth. When not playing games or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside over 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). In any time left over after all that, L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
