SPOILER-FREE REVIEW TL;DR Version... PROS: - great price for the experience - excellent at-home approximation of the real thing, down to having help/hint cards, like you might ask a real-life game master for help - no experience necessary - during COVID: an escape room... in your house... with only those you already hang with daily! - free mobile app for skip-reading-the-rulebook instructions with graphics AND a timer with appropriate atmospheric audio, which adds a lot to the experience (they should promote this feature more) - a "scoring system" that favors quicker exits without using help cards and compares your accomplishments across different Exit games (or to other people, if you want that) - some of these puzzles are just ingenious and I don't know how they can make so many across multiple games and maintain excellent quality CONS: - really struggling to come up with any here... - reaching/picky: there's one puzzle you can only really solve (beyond a powerful imagination) with a very common kitchen item that's not mentioned in the "other things you'll need" section (but is depicted when you get to that puzzle) ... but I can also see an argument that naming it would give too much away - there's also one puzzle where the scissor-work required just takes a long time, only one person can do it while the others watch (long, boring for them), and the longer it takes with the ticking time-pressure, the more socially agonizing it is to be "Edward Scissorhands" ... so this one game could be improved if there was a way to shorten that one puzzle. - unlike a real escape room, you can't break off into sub-teams to solve any puzzles simultaneously ... this is 100% linear ... a very minor thing, though. FULL REVIEW: My first escape room experience was when my 2nd-level-up boss had us do one as a team building thing around the holidays a few years back. So ~8 of us made it out of a hostage-like situation with ~10 seconds left. The thrill of that is akin to the first time one makes an amazingly unexpected shot while golfing (regular or mini-golf). And it makes you want it again. But my first "hit" was free. I not only wanted that experience again, but also wanted to share it with my family. This past summer of 2021, the kids were old enough to get into it, so for my birthday we tried out a real room together. We failed... with several puzzles remaining. We figured if we played smarter and ask for more help earlier, we could win one. So we did it again the last week of summer. And failed again. But this time we were so close, the game master generously gave us 5-10 extra minutes to experience finishing it. Nice, but still a bummer to "lose" again. And they cost about two hundred fifty dollars combined. Worth it, but deterred from another go for a while. Plus, it was a summer of COVID before kids could be vaxed, so we were masked up and scheduling the first session of the day to avoid people, which is much harder during the school year. When along comes my discovery of these Exit games. Gave one each to the kids for Christmas. Now, I'm a board-gamer, so it takes some mental toughness for me to consider buying a game (out of Germany, no less) where I will be damaging game parts on purpose and only playing it once. BUT for the chance of giving my family the escape room experience for this price compared to the real thing ... this is practically a steal! New Year's Eve 2021 was an ideal time to try this, and House of Riddles was the first we've tried so far. It just went fabulously! Everyone contributed, even the 8-year-old spotted some things that saved us. In the end, as a team, the family figured everything out without a single Help card, and we finished in less than the 90min max, but more than the 60min "ideal" which docked us 1 "star" (equal to under 60min + 1 Help card). This was a family-bonding, new-years accomplishment we could all be proud of. And to round out the experience... in real escape rooms, if you win/finish, they get a pic of your group while holding a board with your time on it. Otherwise, you can get a pic, but no time. So before this, we had 2 family photos with no one holding a time. But to close out 2021, I screenshotted & printed the final time (and score) from the mobile app, setup the tripod, and we got a family photo (dog included) where we finally got to hold up our successful escape room exit time! Bottom Line: While it is "just a game," it also holds the potential for building memories with family & friends that you will never forget. Thank you, game makers!
