There are two highly successful escape room game series. One is Exit, and the other is Unlock! There are two main differences between these series. Unlock! doesn't require you change or damage any of the game components, which means after you are done with the game, you can give it to a friend. Or if you have very bad memory, you can play it again. The other difference is Unlock! must be played together with a phone app. It is a timer, you can use it to check whether some of your answers are correct, you ask ask for clues, and so on.
This box of Unlock! - Game Adventures contains three games. They are independent games, set in three different game universes - Ticket To Ride, Mysterium and Pandemic. I have written about how the game system works, so I won't repeat. I'll just share about my experience with these three.
You don't need to have played the original games to be able to play the Unlock! versions. That's what the rulebook says. However I think it helps a little if you have played the original. It is certainly more fun if you are familiar with the original, because you see so many familiar elements in the puzzle version. The three games in the set go from easy difficulty to hard. I played the games with my two daughters (18 & 20), and we played them in order. Ironically, we didn't do so well in Ticket To Ride, but we did best with Pandemic. I think it is because we had not played the Unlock! series for a while and we were rusty. Having practised our problem-solving skills with the first two games, we did better with the third.
We only scored three stars in Ticket To Ride. The game comes with a solution handbook, and we sometimes referred to it. When we got really stuck, we had to. We tried using hints from the app first, but when those didn't work either, or they told us what we already knew, we had to go for the handbook. Sometimes we solved problems too far ahead. By piecing together other pieces of information, we skipped ahead and solved a problem which we were not supposed to be able to solve yet. This created a deadlock, because before we got to that point, we should have obtained a few other pieces of information. Now we were stuck because we were missing those pieces, which were needed for solving other problems.
The first row are some of the cards from Ticket To Ride, and the second row are cards from Mysterium. The art is great and evocative of the original games. This is a big part of the enjoyment.
App interface of Ticket To Ride
App interface of Mysterium
App interface of Pandemic
The puzzles in Unlock! - Game Adventures are interesting and challenging. The app is used in creative ways, and the game challenges you to think out of the box. Not literally, so don't go destroying the game box please. If you like solving puzzles and riddles, and especially if you like the original boardgames, go for it. This is a great family game too.
We scored 5 stars in Pandemic
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