Boxing Day

Rewinding now to that escape room/dinner party night I wrote about last week, I'd like to talk about the other brand of escape room in a box game we tried.... er.... Escape Room in a Box.

This is one of the many Kickstarter-makes-good stories in the board game industry, a product that was funded so successfully and feted with such enthusiasm that it was subsequently purchased by Hasbro. Word is it will be re-released this coming November, now re-christened as the first of a line of games -- Escape Room in a Box: The Werewolf Experiment.

Where this product seeks to stand out from the many other escape games is that it goes in hard for the props. The game contains metal tins and a zippered "bank bag" (just like you will actually encounter in a live escape room), all closed with combination locks you'll have to deduce the codes for. There are other props too, though saying much about them would risk spoiling the experience for those who will one day try the game. Suffice it to say, though I have yet to try some of the escape room games out there, I can't imagine that any others have spent more on the tactile side of things, giving you actual items to interact with.

The puzzles of this game were a pretty authentic representation of the escape room experience too. Some were easy, some were hard (though, talking with another group who played, we didn't necessarily agree on which was which). One puzzle we never did exactly crack how the game was trying to give us the information, though we got to it just the same without having to "cheat" by trying multiple answers through brute force.

Kickstarter backers got a "refill kit," replacing the games disposable items so that it could be played again with another group without having to duplicate any of the items. (Hopefully, this touch makes it to the mass market production.) The game even registered itself with a "track your escape room success" app, placing it alongside physical escape rooms and letting you track your time/score, if you like.

They seem to have thought of everything, and the effort really shows. I'm tempted to dock the product a few points for the one or two obtuse elements of its puzzles.... but then, maybe it was just me and my group that were being obtuse. The bottom line is, this product does a pretty amazing job of rendering the escape room experience in bring-it-home form. I give it an A-.