Episode 418 – Escape Rooms

Escape rooms let your family cooperate in new and interesting ways. But do you prefer a physical, in-person escape room, a video game, or a board game experience?

0:00:00 Fact for 418

HTTP code 418: “I’m a teapot”

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0:05:00 What We’ve Been Playing

Embers (our review)
Lands of Amazement
Aspens
Verdant Arizona

0:12:50 The Family Gamers Community

We’re so happy to welcome new members! You can join the community on Facebook too.

0:13:30 #Backtalk

You shared your purging regrets on Facebook and the #backtalk channel of the Discord.

0:19:25 Escape Rooms

Physical escape rooms – we’ve done a few. Very cool but can feel high pressure. They’re great to do in a group, letting everybody work on different things. Doing it as a family is expensive!

Video games are a much cheaper way to capture this style really well: Portal, The Room (Steam, Google Play, Apple), Escape Academy

Board Game “Escape Rooms”

These range in size and playtime. Some are more puzzley, some are more narrative-driven. But any of them can be a great family experience. And we have reviewed a bunch of them – we’ll talk about six series here:

EXIT series – Fairly immersive, with a plot and setting that hangs together. Everything you need is in the box. Wide variety of puzzles to write on, manipulate, cut, etc. But comes with a downside – that wide variety means you almost always run into a puzzle in the game that is not figure-out-able (for us). They come in a huge range of difficulty, including several that are appropriate to do with younger kids who are just barely reading. Unlike the other games in this list, we think they’re best with more than 2 players. There are also EXIT Kids games now! (Check out the EXIT games we’ve reviewed.)

Unlock series – These require an app. Other than the app, completely card-based and re-settable to pass on to a friend to try. These also have a juvenile line now – Unlock Kids. Our experience has been really uneven. Some really great (Wizard of Oz, Star Wars). Others are just really weird, with puzzles don’t make sense. We generally recommend these, but use caution.

Holiday Hijinks – probably our favorite compact escape-room type game. Packs a ton of puzzles into 18 cards and a web app. Full of puns, trivia, and holiday cultural references. Still best for very small groups, since there’s such a small space to work in. Family friendly, although younger kids will probably be frustrated that they don’t have the trivia knowledge to contribute unless they’re very knowledgeable about the holiday. (Check out our reviews and interviews about Holiday Hijinks.)

Deckscape – feels like a “choose your own adventure” narrative. Mostly a deck of cards, but with a few accessories that made it more immersive. Puzzles could not be attempted more than once, which made the choices feel high-stakes. Best with 2-3 players, because you’re only looking at a few cards at a time – unless you’re willing to take your time and pass them around the table. (We reviewed Deckscape: The Mystery of El Dorado.)

Backstories – not really an escape room, more of a narrative adventure. Work through decisions one at a time as a group. But not only re-settable, it’s replayable, with branching paths and different endings depending on the decisions made! Not exactly family-friendly. Lots of violence and some death. (Check out our Backstories reviews.)

Star Trek: Cryptic – as Trek fans we really loved this one. Work through three different “chapters” in a Starfleet officer’s life, with very thematic puzzles. Pretty much re-settable, but you’ll get great value out of this one even if you only play it once – it takes 3-4 hours to do the whole thing, split into several sessions.

Coded Chronicles (we reviewed Scooby Doo & The Goonies games) – also very narrative driven. But spreads out the responsibility to progress the narrative to all the players! There are multiple books to read in different character “voices”, even though the team is making decisions together. Also re-settable. Very family-friendly, even for kids who are unfamiliar with Scooby Doo or The Goonies.

0:42:00 New Backtalk Question

Have you ever done an in-person escape room? If so, what did you think of it? If not, why not – cost, family-friendliness, or something else?

Tell us on the #backtalk channel on our Discord, or in our Facebook community.

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