Box One By Neil Patrick HarrisTheory11 OnlineEscape roomTabletopTruly exceptional — a must-play for fans of escape rooms, puzzle hunts, and/or NPH. I am a fan of all three, so this was like catnip to me.
The Morrison Game FactoryPostCuriousEscape roomTabletopWell, the story made me cry, so it’s got that going for it. We enjoyed the game: the puzzles are generally straightforward, they are cleanly clued, and the solutions make sense. There is a nice variety of puzzle types and a good use of “standard board game components” in clever ways. Not nearly as similar to “Box One” as I expected it to be. Did I mention that the story made me cry? Highly recommended.
Never HouseDarkParkEscape roomTabletopOne of the best play-at-home escape rooms I have played. Worth buying just for the quality of the props, but we also enjoyed the story and puzzles. Played with 2 and I think that’s probably the right number.
Witchery SpellDarkParkEscape roomTabletopThis is still one of our favorite play-at-home mystery boxes of all time (and we play as many as we can get our hands on). Nice props, good puzzles, and an interesting story. Highly recommended.
The Treasure Trove Of Pirate CoveSolve Our ShirtsEscape roomTabletopJust as clever as the first shirt … and arguably more clever because they couldn’t reuse any of the tricks! This one did feel a bit more like an online room that also happened to have a shirt as a prop than the first one did, but they still managed to make the shirt central to the experience and we were genuinely surprised and impressed by the finale. Highly recommended.
Escape From the Maze of the MinotaurSolve Our ShirtsEscape roomTabletopTremendously clever use of the shirt itself. I tried to guess how many different things they would be able to do with the shirt in advance … and I got about half of them. Highly recommended.
AdriftPostCuriousEscape roomTabletopThis is a unique take on a puzzle-driven narrative. There are four “chapters,” playable in any order, each of which contains three poems, a piece of artwork, and a physical artifact. Poem one hides a message giving you a hint for how to interpret poem 2, which gives a hint for poem 3, which is combined with the artwork and the artifact to yield a final phrase “solving” that chapter. The four phrases together lead to the brief finale. Although the components are beautifully illustrated, there are some issues with the assembly (and disassembly) of the artifacts, particularly the ones involving cardboard. If you want to pass this on after playing you’ll have to be careful, although nothing in the game has to be written on or cut/folded, so that helps. We found the puzzles to be mostly solvable without hints, but one of the four chapters felt really underclued, and it is the one with the artifact that is the hardest to reconfigure, which is unfortunate. Anyway, if you like PostCurious games, you’ll almost certainly like this: despite the hiccups we felt it was a couple of hours well spent.
The Medieval MishapHistory Mysteries [prev. Mini Mysteries Club]Escape roomTabletopAs with “The Egyptian Enigma,” the production values are excellent, from the voice acting to the props. This game is much more substantial than its predecessor, providing a series of puzzles that use lovely papercraft props (many are used multiple times). It’s fun to play them both but I would treat the Egyptian Enigma as the light appetizer and this game as the much more substantial main course. Still on the easy side and would still be good for playing with kids, but “The Medieval Mishap” has enough content to be worth the money. If you only play one of the two, this is the one to play. Recommended.
The Ghost in The AtticThe Mystery AgencyEscape roomTabletopThis was our favorite of the three (as of this writing) Mystery Agency games. High-quality props and a well-told story that uses the components in satisfying ways. I suppose the actual board game could have had a little more meat to it, but realistically one wouldn’t expect it to be a genuinely replayable thing on its own. Puzzles on the easy side, but we enjoyed this game very much. Recommended.
Secret Of The ScientistEscape Room The GameEscape roomTabletopThis was one of the earliest jigsaw puzzle / tabletop escape room mashups to hit the market, and it shows. Not the greatest puzzles and some things can be difficult to see in the artwork. The story is also just … weird. But, we had fun, and that’s the most important thing. I’d say their later efforts at this style of game are better, but this one isn’t awful.
