Can You Be A Wild Western Detective?
Welcome to another amazing escape room by Kosmos. EXIT Kidnapped in Fortune City is the newest addition to my table of games but unlike most of the other games in the EXIT series, this one isn’t about escaping from somewhere, it’s about solving the mystery and saving the sheriff of an old western town called Fortune City. That’s why you have to decide if you have what it takes to be a wild western detective.
Game Unboxing and Setup
Those of you familiar with the EXIT series will know by now how this works, but for those that don’t know, here it is.
Inside the box for EXIT Kidnapped in Fortune City is a pile of cards which you will need to separate into piles based on their respective backs, these piles are riddle cards, help cards, and answer cards. Don’t look at the front of these or you’ll spoil the fun. You’ll also find inside a spinning 3-sectionned disk (the decoder disk), some folded pieces of paper which are the buildings in town, a town map, and the sherrif’s notebook. Set these out in reach without looking at them. There will also be four gems and a few other “strange items” which you will need to set within reach, and you will want to get yourselves something to write with and maybe something to write on and some scissors too.
You can score your game at the end as long as you time yourselves playing, your phones built in stopwatch is fine for this but Kosmos have their own app with a timer if you fancy some thematic music to go with your game as you play. You are ready to begin.
Gameplay Overview
Generally speaking, the EXIT series games start you off with a page or multiple pages of a book and let you look for your starting point for your first riddle, but in EXIT Kidnapped in Fortune City you have to solve your first riddle before you can even open the book. This immediately made the game feel different from the others and hooked us in to the puzzle, we really got in the riddle-solving mood quickly and whizzed through the challenge onto the second puzzle and beyond. Solving puzzles can involve writing on, cutting up, folding, moving, and generally destroying the game components, but with some careful thinking, using a pencil instead of a pen for example, it’s possible to play without damaging the materials meaning you can pass it to a friend or play again in the future if you like.
As you play through the wild western themed puzzles you will unlock information that will help you solve the mystery of who kidnapped the sheriff and where they’re hiding. It’s important to keep track of all your game pieces and any clues you think you might have as it will speed up the process of eliminating suspects and those few minutes could be the difference between a full 10 out of 10 on the score board or not.
Most of the EXIT games have a linear sequence where each riddle has to be solved in order before you can move on to the next, but with EXIT Kidnapped in Fortune City, there are several riddles that relate to each of the town buildings which can be solved in any order you choose as long as you complete one before moving to the next, this was another interesting feature of the game that kept us repeat riddle solvers on our toes.
Once you have completed nine riddles the final riddle is able to be solved. To do this, SPOILER ALERT, you need to know who kidnapped the sheriff and where they live on the town map to be able to input the code into the decoder disk and see if you’re right. If you’re successful, you’ll free the sheriff from the home of his captor and win the game.
The game ends when all ten riddles have been solved, saving the sheriff of Fortune City.
Final Thoughts
This was such a fun one to have a go at and really made us think without being too difficult. You really have to look at every bit of information they give you and the story of this particular game was different and interesting and we enjoyed it. We actually passed our copy on to family to have a go at, they’re not big into gaming like we are but we think they’ll really like this one too.
My Own Playthrough Score?
Have a guess? Go on, if you’ve read any of my other EXIT reviews you’ll have an idea of how we might have done. My partner and I play our games in the EXIT series as a two, and for Kidnapped in Fortune City we took a total of 75 minutes and didn’t use any help cards giving us a score of 9/10. We did however get the last riddle wrong on the first attempt as we missed a crucial detail from the clues. So all in all, a pretty good score. SPOILER ALERT, We got ourselves narrowed down to just two suspects but couldn’t choose between them, in the end we guessed and it was the other one, even though we’d read all the information over and over we missed a key part where one of the two suspects had been not just at a particular location, but there at a given time. Nevertheless, we were right in the end.
About the Author:
My name is Charlotte and I’m a married mum of two boys, one with special needs, and one who is turning into a gamer like me. I love board and video games and have been playing games since before I can remember. Ever since picking up my first EXIT game (The Abandoned Cabin) I’ve been a fan of the series and I’m not far off from playing them all.
