ABSOLUTE ASCENDANCY

Commencing operation . . .

Overview

If you like escape rooms, you’re gonna want to read up on what I’ve got in store for you today. A little over a month ago, a friend gave me a copy of “Unlock! Escape Adventures” which essentially aims to simulate an escape room experience.

Components

The game uses cards constituting mainly of pictures of objects, which can be combined to progress the overall puzzle. A dedicated App is used to keep track of time, and some cards directly interact with the App; inputting codes, and other puzzle type interactions. The game comes with a ‘learn to play’ tutorial and three separate challenges; two of similar difficulty and one extra hard.

Gameplay

Me and my group of friends failed our first challenge mainly because we underestimated how much attention we needed to pay to the cards which typically showed the room we were currently in.

There are sometimes hidden numbers in these rooms which refer to hidden objects as depicted on the corresponding card number, and even just missing one of these numbers left us stumped on how to proceed with the challenge.

A single missing clue can very much be a game ender.

The app does have some pre-programmed hints that are either time or progress based which can help players that are stuck, to help simulate the game master in a real life escape room. There is also a hint button on the app that players can press to get a clue, but this will reduce your overall final score; for succeeding the challenge is one thing, but to do so and get a high score is an entirely different beast.

Many cards require adding the related numbers together to get a new card to progress the challenge. Players may be tempted to randomly guess all number combinations, however, the game comes with many fake cards which are traps that penalise the players if sprung, instructing them to press the penalty button on the app; robbing the players of two to three minutes of their remaining time.

Learning from our previous mistakes, we managed to even the score and clear the second challenge (same difficulty rating as previous) in our first shot, although we needed a lot of help due to a crafty puzzle design, right at the end of the challenge. We did not get round to attempting the third and final, most difficult challenge.

Long Term Value

It is easy to think a game like this would not have long term value. After all, once all three challenges have been completed, that’s it. There is little point in having the same people redo a challenge because they now know how to navigate it. However, if you are like me and you have several friendship groups, once you have completed the challenges, you can change roles from participant to game master for your other friends. I have not had the opportunity to do so as of yet, but this is something I am anticipating sometime in the future.

Introduce the game to a fresh set of friends and act as the escape room game master as they attempt the challenges. Hell, if you’re really devious you may even consider charging them for the experience!

Game masters are often compensated in some way for hosting; usually through food and drink. Do not devalue the time and effort it takes to prepare a good gaming day. Although “Unlock! Escape Adventures” is simple to set up; it takes energy to keep a group motivated, especially when lots of brain power is involved.

Conclusion

Went on a bit of a tangent at the end there. Anyway, if you enjoy escape rooms, then I would recommend considering “Unlock! Escape Adventures” as I think it does a brilliant job at recreating the experience as best as can be done for a card game.

Mission complete – Overlord Drakow signing out.