EXIT: The Game is a series of puzzle games made in Germany by Thames & Kosmos.
Each box, rated 1-5 according to difficulty, contains a narrative driven series of puzzles with similar design elements to escape rooms.
They can be done solo or with a small group of people, taking anywhere between 2-5 hours to do.
All that is to say, that they do tickle my fancy in a way that other puzzle games in a box don’t. Its not a jigsaw, its not 101 riddles shoved in the pages of a soft-cover book and its not all just math or reading comprehension tests. Its a mixture of all of the above and a pretty hefty amount of lateral thinking, a phrase coined by Maltese psychologist Edward de Bono to mean thinking outside the box.
My first venture into this series of escape rooms you can do on the couch was EXIT: Kidnapped in Fortune City.
This one tasked myself and my father (who does these with me in what he calls a “bonding session”) with figuring out who the kidnapper of the Sheriff is in a classic western setting, saloons and all. Each location of this town has a puzzle for you to solve and you can do them in any order. Sometimes, you may not have all the pieces for the puzzle you are attempting and need to come back later.
Not having all the pieces for the puzzle you are presented with is extremely common in all these boxes it seems. At the time of writing I have done five and half of one more. A solid amount of each puzzle is simply knowing which clues are relevant to which puzzles. So much in fact that for each puzzle, there is a set of three hint cards. The first hint card only ever tells you what all the clues are. The second hints on how to use them. And the third is very cleverly titled “Solution” because it spoon-feeds you the answer.
I cannot recall ever reading one of the Solution hint cards but there has been more than a few times were Hint #1 or Hint #2 have come in handy.
Obviously, there is more satisfaction if you don’t use these cards but sometimes the flow of the game is more important than you potentially figuring out what the clever Germans have put together.
The next one we did was EXIT: The Sinister Mansion. This one had a puzzle that used the actual physical packaging! It expanded our ideas as to what can be possible but clearly did not expand them enough as you will soon see. It tasked us with looking at all the different clocks on the box, an item I deemed as merely marketing for the shelf was now a part of the game.
After doing these two I was now obsessed and looked up the company online to see all of my choices. Some intrigued me more than others and while I did consider ordering them online I realized part of the magic was going to a physical store and choosing one in-situ. But I did browse some forums and learnt that the destructive nature of these boxes is often criticized in a way I find is unfair. Some puzzles ask you to physically cat up the cards or booklets. Some ask you to fold things. Some even ask that you dismantle core playing components to find additional clues. I find all of this incredibly ingenious and fun. These boxes only cost $25AUD and consist mostly of recyclable cardboard. During our adventures we try not to be too destructive so others may enjoy them but the way I see it, $25 for a few hours of quality entertainment is good value. That’s about the same price as a single movie ticket!
Using the packaging is fun. Cutting up little bit of cardboard to make a perspective based puzzle is fun. What our minds were not ready for was the newest box we completed. EXIT: Theft on the Mississippi.
This one was a lot of fun to do on a Sunday morning while sipping a flat white and munching on a toastie. But our brain power was very simply not prepared for one specific step.
SPOILERS (Click Here)
It asked that we physically destroy the box. The same box we would use to pack it back away and display on a shelf. It required scissors against the thickened cardboard with a bit of peeling back the graphic!
I find this step to be extremely clever but, if you chose to read the spoiler, you can see why I would be hesitant to do it even after reading the hint card!
The next was EXIT: The Cemetery of the Knight. This one had some translucent bits of plastic that you lined up with stuff to make numbers. I also enjoy the more classic horror themes of a Cemetery. Its worth noting that many but not all of these puzzle boxes have little video trailers on YouTube, including this one! Link to video. These trailers are bit camp and I am unsure how successful they are as a marketing tool but its certainly a nice touch.
The final one that’s under my belt marked as completed is EXIT: The Haunted Roller Coaster. This one was the easiest, being rated a 2/5 stars for difficulty but that does not even remotely mean it was boring or un-challenging. Its not much a spoiler that at one stage you make the classic primary school Chatterbox which I think is quite fun!
Where to next? Well Juli and I are about halfway through EXIT: The Secret Lab which so far has been a fun romp. I will be putting all the games in a spreadsheet and marking them as complete. I hope to eventually do them all as each box is quite varied and unique.
In conclusion, I recommend these little boxes of brainteasers if you have the chance. I personally probably wouldn’t ever do them alone, it seems well suited to two or three people. I am glad to have found them. Its not often I stumble upon a series like this that doesn’t feel in some way cheap or mass-produced in a way that makes it boring.
Thanks again for tuning in to my little blog! I got quite the positive reception from the last one and I enjoyed writing it. Expect more of these.
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See you next time,
Jackson