Dice-apalooza

Most German board games feature delicately balanced sets of rules that carefully govern the things that players can do. One missed rule can change your perception of the whole game, as can one player finding a new strategic approach to the game that no one else noticed before.

And then there's something completely different, like Escape: The Curse of the Temple.

A group endeavor that would be better categorized as a party game than anything else, Escape has players cooperating to explore and exit from a temple loaded with all sorts of pitfalls and traps. They do this by individually rolling special dice with a variety of symbols on them. Players in the same room of the temple can pool their die rolls together to achieve their goals, but the time pressures of the game are such that the players can't be successful if they just move around in a single mob.

When I say time pressures, I mean that quite literally. The distinctive feature of Escape is that a game unfolds in exactly 10 minutes of real time. Actual play of the game is simultaneous, a chaotic frenzy of people rolling dice, shouting what they have and what they need to one another, and trying to ignore the shouts of other players who've split up into different parts of the temple. A recording (along the lines of Space Alert) tracks the time remaining, and also throws in obstacles the player must account for in their quest.

The game is pretty good fun, I found. And it's hard to beat its running time; it's an easy game to either start out an evening with (as you wait for other gamers to arrive) or conclude an evening with (when nobody feels the drive for anything more that's too involved). But what it isn't good for is anyone who's a stickler for rules. The open form and simultaneous nature of the gameplay absolutely precludes being able to take in everything that's happening. And things get even more chaotic when you add in the "curses" that force odd real world physical limitations on the players.

In short, if you just let go, Escape is a decent enough game. It's not ever going to become a personal favorite of mine, but it seems like one I'd never mind playing -- it's simple, quick, and fun. I'd grade it a B.