Escape Room in a Box Werewolf Experiment Reviews
In Escape Room In A Box: The Werewolf Experiment, Dr. Cynthia Gnaw is a brilliant scientist who—oopsie—accidentally turned herself into a werewolf while trying to create a superhuman. But science requires reproducible results, so … at presentyou lot're going to turn into werewolves unless you can notice the antidote within the hour.
What Is Escape Room in a Box: The Werewolf Experiment?
Escape Room in a Box: The Werewolf Experiment is an escape room game for 2 to 8 players, ages 13 and upwards, and takes well-nigh an hour to play. It is now bachelor for buy online and retails for $29.99. I played with several kids who were younger than 13 (tweens and up) and it went fine. Thematically it's about finding an antidote and then you don't turn into werewolves merely at that place's nothingbesides scary; some of the puzzles were more challenging than others, but at that place were definitely plenty that the kids were able to work on them as well.
The Backstory
About ii years ago, Juliana Patel and Ariel Rubin launched a Kickstarter project forEscape Room in a Box: The Werewolf Experiment. It was a keen idea: escape room games had progressed from point-and-click computer games to real-earth, concrete environments, which were becoming more than and more pop. But real escape rooms are pricey: $25 per person or more for about an hour's worth of puzzle-solving. Patel and Rubin wanted to bridge the gap: their version would cost less than physical games (the Kickstarter pledge was $45) and y'all could enjoy the feel from the comfort of your own home.
The Kickstarter project was successful, with over 2,300 backers eager to friction match wits with a mad scientist trying to turn everyone into werewolves. The project took a little longer than planned to evangelize to backers, shipping in August of 2017. Then Patel and Rubin announced that Mattel had licensed the game and would exist producing it for retail sale, lowering the price bespeak and making information technology more widely bachelor.
This review is based on the Mattel version, which differs slightly in components from the Kickstarter version, but otherwise has the same puzzles and theme.
Escape Room in a Box: The Werewolf ExperimentComponents
Unlike nigh of my game reviews, I don't want to spell out besides much here. The outside of the box says "nineteen puzzles" and "3 locks" so you know at to the lowest degree that much. What Ican tell you is that there are three fiddling plastic containers, each with a lock on information technology. Two of the locks are combination locks and one requires a central. The locks themselves are plastic—they're function of a puzzle, not actually meant to continue you out of the box if y'all really wanted to interruption into it.
At that place's a variety of paper and cardstock with illustrations and writing on it, a few envelopes, and several other components, like a modest pencil, a petri dish, and … well, that's probably enough. There are too a hint booklet and an respond booklet, in case y'all need a little assist or get totally stuck.
I would say, compared to the other at-home escape room games I've played, this does have more stuff in it: about of the games I've played are largely newspaper and cardboard, with just a few not-paper components.Escape Room in a Box: The Werewolf Experiment has more physical objects to play with.
One important note: the game is intended to be played once, because after that you'll know the solutions to the puzzles, so it's non really something you would play again anyhow. Also, some of the newspaper puzzles will be written on in the form of solving them. Mattel should soon have a set of PDFs that volition let you reprint the puzzles and instructions on how to reset the game. (The electric current password-protected PDFs on the site are for the Kickstarter version only.)
How to PlayEscape Room in a Box: The Werewolf Experiment
The Goal
The goal of the game is to piece of work together to find the antitoxin before your hour runs out. Solve puzzles to find the key and combinations to the locks!
Setup
There'due south not actually any setup to speak of. When y'all open up the box, you're greeted with the sight of a large "Keep out" sign, and another sealed paper that says "Open this when you are ready to start the game." The newspaper tells y'all that you lot'll need a timer device plus some extra pencils, and that you lot won't need to generally destroy anything to solve a puzzle.
Gameplay
Once yous're ready, yous just open up the sealed paper, which kicks off the game with a little more about the story, and and then tells you to start the timer. Once you lift the "belt" (seen in the photo above), you can elevator upwards the rest of the materials, and start working on the puzzles.
There are a number of different types of puzzles. Without giving also many details, at that place are word-based puzzles, number-based puzzles, physical puzzles, and some that require conscientious observation.
Game Stop
The game ends when yous find the antitoxin … or when your time runs out and you all turn into werewolves.
Why Yous Should PlayEscape Room in a Box: The Werewolf Experiment
I really relish escape rooms—I've played many online computer versions, a few real-globe versions, and a handful of play-calm versions.Escape Room in a Box: The Werewolf Experiment is one of the first boxed versions I had heard of when it launched on Kickstarter, and I was curious how it would turn out. Unfortunately for the designers, betwixt the time the Kickstarter concluded and whenthe game was finally available to the public, several other game companies too released play-at-home escape room games, some of which nosotros've reviewed here on GeekDad. So the timing turned out to be a little tricky—the showtime to market always gets a bit of an advantage.
All of these escape room games tend to exist single-play experiences, since there's non really much of a challenge in solving a mystery y'all already know the answer to, but the games have unlike levels of reusability. In the case of Escape Room in a Box: The Werewolf Experiment, information technology's nice to know that we volition be able to print out replacement puzzles so that somebody else could play it again, though if that's your plan I would recommendnon using the diverse envelopes as scratch paper (which we did).
There's a range of prices on the escape room games, and this i is on the college finish of that range. Every bit I said before, it does include more non-paper-thin, non-paper components than nearly of the others I've played so far, so you tin can see where the money goes, as well. I similar the style that the cards-onlyDeckscape simulates locks and physical puzzles, but there's something to be said well-nigh popping open up an bodily lock with a key that y'all've plant subconscious away somewhere. If you really like the tactile attribute of concrete locks and puzzles,Escape Room in a Box: The Werewolf Experiment has the others beat in that aspect. And fifty-fifty so, $30 for a group to play an escape room game is withal much cheaper than going to an bodily escape room. If you lot practice get a chance to go to a real-life escape room, I highly recommend that, too, but information technology's a bit of a splurge! The play-at-home versions are an first-class compromise between price and physical puzzles.
I played with a grouping of five adults and four kids—more than than the recommended role player count, but it withal worked pretty well. Having fewer players would allow each person to do a niggling more, but having more people gives yous more brains to work with, which can be skillful or bad, I suppose. Some of the puzzles are parallel rather than linear, which means that you tin have multiple people working on different things at the same fourth dimension, rather than having to solve one clue before moving on to the next. In some cases, multiple puzzles will feed into some other one, merely you'll have to effigy out the best gild to approach everything. I exercise like that anybody can work on things in tandem, just information technology does mean that somebody might cease a puzzle that you hadn't even seen because y'all were working on something else.
The age rating says xiii and up, and I think it's for a combination of the puzzles and the theme—but the tweens nosotros played with didn't have whatever bug with the werewolf theme or the types of puzzles, as far equally I could tell.
Together, nosotros did manage to escape Dr. Gnaw's scheme before our fourth dimension ran out, and nosotros had a blast doing it!
If you like escape room games,Escape Room in a Box: The Werewolf Experiment is definitely worth trying! For more information, visit the official website. I've read that Patel and Rubin are at piece of work on the next game in the series, so stay tuned!
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Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.
Source: https://geekdad.com/2018/01/escape-room-box-werewolf-experiment/
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