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! New Game Adventures includes 3 separate ‘adventures,’ i.e., 3 separate card decks based around different boardgame themes: Heat (rated ‘easy’ on the box), Carcassonne (rated ‘medium’), and 7 Wonders (‘hard’).
Pick an adventure, read the top card of its deck to find out what the mission is, and…
Actually, rewind a little: if you’ve never encountered an Unlock! game, they come with a short tutorial (10 cards, to be found in the Heat tuckbox)—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 or lettered cards of various types:
The starting card, which tells you what your mission is, or at least points you in the direction of figuring out your objective;
Objects (some might actually be locations or people—or a goat in one case—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 identify the next card to look at (the example in the rule leaflet is a locked cabinet, card number 35 with a red jigsaw piece graphic, and a key, card 11 with a blue piece; 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, often 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 deduce from clues given elsewhere;
- Other—these might be locations which directly reference a bunch of other cards (i.e., items at that location) or other information that, e.g., helps you with machines and codes; and
- Penalty cards—if you take a stab in the dark, sometimes you end up taking a wrong turn and are rewarded with a penalty card, costing you time in the game. (Machines similarly punish wrong guesses with time penalties, but without involving cards.)
The rules tell you to divvy up the pile of cards among all the players, but one thing that they don’t mention is each person then sorting their cards by the big numbers and letters on the back—why on earth wouldn’t you do that, to speed up finding cards? It seems such an obvious first step. True, some of the adventure’s cards have different backs and the numbers aren’t continuous, potentially giving you clues, but you’re going to see them all as you tediously search through the pack anyway, so why not sort them at the start? (The cards also have a small number at the bottom, letting you reset the decks to their original order once you’re ready to pass the game on.)
The 7 Wonders adventure also makes use of a map, which you shouldn’t open until told to, and Carcassonne uses a handful of nicely styled (and cleverly used) meeples.
The other main component is the associated phone app (available for both iPhone and Android)—this is essential to play the game. 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. Annoyingly, the app requires you to complete the mission in one sitting. Although you can pause and resume, don’t exit the app or lock your phone for any length of time, as you’ll risk losing the current state of the game, and have to redo all the machines (and possibly codes) you’ve already completed.
The app immediately starts counting down (from 60 minutes for Heat, and 90 for 7 Wonders); the app doesn’t show a countdown timer for Carcassonne, but has a sun crossing the sky—the tuckbox states a target of 80 minutes, so I guess that’s the length of a day for this adventure. It doesn’t matter hugely if you don’t finish the game within the allotted time, as the app keeps on a-ticking; it just affects your final rating. Besides counting time and acting as the mechanism for codes and machines, the app provides atmospheric background music and sound effects.
To begin, you turn over the starting card, press ‘play’ on the app, and off you go.
I won’t say anything specifically about the game to avoid giving spoilers, save that you should make sure you have a decent amount of space on the table for Carcassonne, but here are a few general pointers:
- examine the cards closely—very closely as some contain multiple clues, and don’t ignore the backs;
- anywhere you make a choice, remember what you picked—you might need that information later;
- think beyond the cards—clues can be hidden elsewhere;
- 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. 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.
A Slight Digression
Several changes have been made in the games’ packaging since my last Unlock! purchase, and I assume what I’ve got with this one is how the games will be manufactured now. The picture above shows an older game box on the left, and Unlock! New Game Adventures on the right.
A criticism I made in my review of Unlock! Game Adventures is that the box is too big. The same’s true here, with loads of empty space in the box. However, gone is the plastic insert in favour of a cardboard one, what’s more, with cute little tuck boxes for the individual adventures, making those much more portable (apart from having to deal with the map but I guess you can’t have everything). The meeples will just about fit into Carcassonne’s tuck box, if you can live with a slight bulge.
It’s unfortunately also the case that the main box doesn’t have a dedicated space for the meeples either, and they’re kind of just mashed into the insert. The old plastic one had a bit of space below the card decks for extra bits and bobs like that.
I can’t recall if my older games were shrink-wrapped, but the box here is sealed with those sticky tabs—like them or loathe them, they do reduce the amount of plastic used. They were actually fairly easy to remove without damaging the box. The card decks also came wrapped in paper rather than plastic.
Besides the packaging changes, the rules no longer come as a booklet, but as a smaller and shorter leaflet, which isn’t as customised to the box as before, though it’s sufficient. The games used to include a solutions booklet, but all you get here is a QR code taking you to a download page. On the other hand, a totally unnecessary flyer advertising the three games these missions are based on was in the box.
These manufacturing changes are generally beneficial to the environment, I guess, but some are undoubtedly driven by a desire to save costs. Possibly another cost thing is that the finish on the cards isn’t as nice as that of the handful of older Unlock! games I have.
Wrap Up
The puzzles are a mix of obvious and brain-taxing and mesh cleverly with the themes of the original games. Unlike with Unlock! Game Adventures, having some familiarity with the boardgames is a must—while you could enjoy the Heat and Carcassonne adventures without having played the games, I think it would be more of a struggle with 7 Wonders.
Talking about 7 Wonders, I did find one of the puzzles impossible—without giving anything away, the lighting effect just didn’t illuminate the clue for me even when I knew exactly where it was. I don’t know if this was a manufacturing defect or that this one just doesn’t work, but it was annoying.
The use of the app is inventive and immersive, and the hints mechanism is nicely done, avoiding total frustration and toss-the-table meltdown.
The outside of box says 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 includes a puzzle that requires players to split into 2 groups relaying information between them, 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.
About the author
Current favourite boardgames are Ark Nova and The Sheep, with a side of Dune: Imperium - Uprising and Paleo. 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.
