Fancy yourself a detective, do you?
With more than a few Exit games under my belt, I looked forward to seeing what Exit Theft on the Mississippi had in store. I’m no novice when it comes to puzzles and riddles and I love a challenge, so I was excited to delve into a different scenario; with Kosmos rating their game at 3/5 difficulty, I expected EXIT Theft on the Mississippi to be the perfect evening game with my long-time gaming partner and husband, only to find it’s not the usual escape room in-a-box game that most other EXIT games give you, but rather, this particular EXIT game gives you the chance to play detective and solve the mystery of who stole the important papers of a Belgian businessman.
Game Unboxing and Setup
EXIT Theft on the Mississippi, like its predecessors in the EXIT series, is quick and simple to set up. Inside the bod you will find the rulebook, it’s important that this is the ONLY part of the game you look at before you’re ready to begin as the other components all form parts of the story and should only be looked at when you’re given permission to do so by the game. If you’re new to EXIT the game series, that might sound confusing; it was a confusing on our first EXIT game too, but don’t worry, read the rulebook (which is only a page or two) and you’ll be set to go.
The game itself contains three decks of cards which you will need to separate into their respective piles (Riddle cards, Help cards, and Answer cards) before you begin, a “decoder disk” (for solving the puzzles), a logbook of the River Queen (the boat you’re now aboard) and a few other items including a scene of bar with a few spaces set out for you to place and move your suspects, and your suspects themselves of course… how exciting. You might want to grab yourself pen or pencil and some paper too before you begin for note taking.
Fancy yourself a detective, do you?
With more than a few Exit games under my belt, I looked forward to seeing what Exit Theft on the Mississippi had in store. I’m no novice when it comes to puzzles and riddles and I love a challenge, so I was excited to delve into a different scenario; with Kosmos rating their game at 3/5 difficulty, I expected EXIT Theft on the Mississippi to be the perfect evening game with my long-time gaming partner and husband, only to find it’s not the usual escape room in-a-box game that most other EXIT games give you, but rather, this particular EXIT game gives you the chance to play detective and solve the mystery of who stole the important papers of a Belgian businessman.
Game Unboxing and Setup
EXIT Theft on the Mississippi, like its predecessors in the EXIT series, is quick and simple to set up. Inside the bod you will find the rulebook, it’s important that this is the ONLY part of the game you look at before you’re ready to begin as the other components all form parts of the story and should only be looked at when you’re given permission to do so by the game. If you’re new to EXIT the game series, that might sound confusing; it was a confusing on our first EXIT game too, but don’t worry, read the rulebook (which is only a page or two) and you’ll be set to go.
The game itself contains three decks of cards which you will need to separate into their respective piles (Riddle cards, Help cards, and Answer cards) before you begin, a “decoder disk” (for solving the puzzles), a logbook of the River Queen (the boat you’re now aboard) and a few other items including a scene of bar with a few spaces set out for you to place and move your suspects, and your suspects themselves of course… how exciting. You might want to grab yourself pen or pencil and some paper too before you begin for note taking.
Gameplay Overview – No Spoliers!
Once you decide to go ahead and start the timer (scoring points at the end is only possible if you time your game), you’re let loose with some of
the game components including the logbook in which the captain of the ship starts you out with a note stating that one of the passengers has reported some of his important papers have gone missing and he gives you a clue as to who that thief may have been. From here on out it’s all hands on deck as you work your way through the puzzles EXIT Theft on the Mississippi has in store for you to help you slowly narrow down the suspects and recover the papers.
Despite this not being my first EXIT game, EXIT Theft on the Mississippi was a challenge. The riddles and puzzles are expected, of course, it wouldn’t be an EXIT game without them, but the added pressure of trying to establish the criminal on board the boat at the same time certainally gives EXIT Theft on the Mississippi an interesting story and keeps you engaged with the story throughout.
Be prepared to draw on or cut up your game components in order to solve the riddles; EXIT Theft on the Mississippi is made to be a one-time-only game. This concept means that Kosmos are able to create unique puzzles with unique solutions to keep people like me (who love the EXIT game series) coming back for more and still providing a challenge. The concept of destroying parts of the game is horrifying to some, me included, and I like to try and do as much as I can with pen and paper, but inevitably there are certain moments where pen and paper aren’t enough and EXIT Theft on the Mississippi proved this when one of the riddles was too much for me and I had to cut up the logbook (sad face). The good news here though is that pretty much everything is made of cardboard and is therefore recyclable, so if your game does get destroyed beyond salvage and there’s no hope of you ever playing detective again, you can rest assured that the environment wont suffer, even if you did for destroying the game parts.
If you manage to solve the riddles of EXIT Theft on the Mississippi and work out the culprit, congratulations, you’re officially a detective! But how well did you do? Once the game is over you can score you can score points based on how long it took you to complete and how many help cards you needed to use along the way. This is a great way of tracking how you do compared to your friends and family, or how you fared against other EXIT games you may have tried (or will try in the future).
Final Thoughts
So what do I think of EXIT Theft on the Mississippi as a game? I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t my favourite. For me, playing an escape room style game where being locked in somewhere and having to escape before it’s too late is thrilling and fun, and the change from the expected lock-in to a mystery-solving cruise was nice, but not as enjoyable as I would have liked. I think the whole aspect of “escape before it’s too late” is what gives games like the EXIT series the excitement, and EXIT Theft on the Mississippi gives you the idea of working within a timeframe, as the thief needs to be caught before the boat reaches it’s destination, but it’s just not the same as a deadly threat or the fear of being locked in forever. Having said that, solving a mystery was a nice way to spend the evening with my husband.
My Own Playthrough Score?
Well it’s safe to say that we did quite poorly on this one… I don’t know whether it was just the difference between EXIT Theft on the Mississippi and other EXIT games in the sense that we weren’t doing a traditional escape, or whether we just didn’t have our thinking caps on for this one, I don’t know, but we scored a measly 2 points with the timer coming in at 125 minutes and a grand total of 6 clues required throughout the game to help us solve the mystery. I have to admit, I’m not proud of my score, in fact, it’s the worst score we’ve achieved in any of the EXIT games we’ve played so far with it being the longest to play of them all and the one we needed the most clues for. Maybe you will do better?
