Magnifying Glasses at the Ready!
It’s time to work together to solve some mysteries!
Part of the popular EXIT The Game franchise, this escape room box is the second of their games designed for families, perfect if the kids in your life have enjoyed their EXIT Kids range, or you fancy doing something a bit different as a family.
Containing two different scenarios, this box offers a lot of fun at a reasonable price. But is this a case of master sleuthing in action? Or should this mystery be left alone?
Let’s get puzzling
Inside this box there are two escape room-style games. These are ‘The Trophy Case’, where you help the heroes save the Talent Show Trophy and ‘Night at the Carnival’, where a the night at the carnival is not all it seems…
Both adventures follow the EXIT Heroes, animal characters previously used in other family escape rooms in the series. Like the characters, there are references to the previous EXIT family games within these stories but if, like me, you have never heard of them before, you can follow the story with no issues.
The two games are played in order: ‘The Trophy Case’ first, followed by ‘Night at the Carnival’. Before each game, someone reads out the start of
the adventure, which helps give you the background on the story. You play by following a series of cards which each give a puzzle and then lead you to a code. This code is placed in your decoder disk and, if right, tells you the code of the card to look for next. This continues until you’ve completed all the puzzles and you unlock the narrative at the end of the book to tie the adventure together.
Everything you need is within the box itself except paper and pencil for any notes, scissors and a smartphone, used for a couple of sound based puzzles.
If necessary, there are 2 hints available for each puzzle and a solution.
Digging a little deeper for clues
This mid-level offering offers something the whole family can enjoy and is great fun for not just kids.
The individual puzzles are all incredibly varied, using different components from the box. This means it’s perfect for a family evening of fun, as even if one puzzle is difficult, another may be much more engaging. The components are also nicely made. While all paper based, real thought has gone into their design: there’s even a tiny flick book for the hamster character, Ham!
You can also cut out tiny certificates from the instruction booklet if you would like (although certificates for the first are printed on the back of the set up for the second adventure which feels like an oversight).
We had a great time playing these games, and we became so engrossed we played them back-to-back.
However, like all EXIT games, my main issue comes with replayability.
While escape rooms are tricky to replay, the fact you have to destroy (rip) certain cards to complete the puzzle once or twice, means that you can’t pass it onto others. This feels particularly prevalent for a family game, which kids could pass onto their friends or cousins to enjoy.
As a family, we happily pass escape room style games onto each other, such as Star Trek Cryptic, showing it’s possible to do this genre without having to chuck out the whole game. This is why when we played this game, we cut the pieces out for a puzzle, but anything else remained intact so it could be passed on and be reused.
My other suggestion for the game would be to utilise the characters more. Maybe everyone choosing a character and each player then having their special ability would be a nice touch?
Another mystery solved
Overall, we had a lot of fun playing these two adventures. The artwork was beautiful and the variety of puzzles meant we could play them back-to-back without it getting repetitive. I wish nothing had to be destroyed in these games so they could be passed on but, except that, if you’re after something different for the whole family to enjoy, this could be the one!
