Unlock! Supernatural Adventures by Space Cowboy
This set of "escape rooms at home" use a deck of custom cards and a downloaded phone or tablet app to guide you through the adventure (and keep track of how much time you have used). Some of the games also require components in the box, including the occasional surprise set of components. Here are some supernatural adventures...
Nova City Under Threat
A group of superheroes hangs out at their HQ when the call comes in to thwart a bank robbery! Players use the heroes to save the hostages and end the threat, but that's only the beginning of the action as a supervillain behind the robbery enacts a bigger scheme that could mean disaster for Nova City.
The game has a great premise using a variety of heroes with different powers. Things started off a little slow, making it hard to figure out where the game was supposed to be going. The situation did not improve as we got frustrated with a lot of the logical leaps we needed to make to proceed through the narrative. We took a lot of hints, went down a lot of wrong rabbit holes, and went way overtime trying to solve this one. It was very disappointing.
Dia de Los Muertos
Ana's Abuela wants to celebrate the Day of the Dead, though not all the family ancestors were the most respectable people when they died. Ana has a brother and sister. They all dress up and go to the family celebration, which turn into an adventure in the afterlife, trying to set the situation right.
This game has a lot of fun puzzles that tie in well with the theme. The use of the app is very clever with some unexpected twists that move the story along nicely. We had the usual assortment of very easy and very inexplicable puzzles. We used hints a few times but did not think anything was too much of a stretch (well, maybe the one with dates). This was a lot more fun and a bit easier than the previous deck, which surprised us. We did take a really long time getting through it.
Raganrok
Players start off as a Viking warrior on a ship that fights a mighty sea beast. The ship is wreaked and you wander into the afterlife where Loki has kicked off Ragnarok, the Norse Apocalypse! Can you make it through the end of times and still be alright?
In addition to the usual card and app puzzles, the game includes a couple of cardboard weapons that are used with cards to solve puzzles. Players also use runes that they can cast in sets of four to solve puzzles. One card lists a handful of runes; later in the game another card adds even more. The app has a special spot to "cast the runes" by clicking their images in order. While very thematic, this mechanism was also very problematic. Many times it was hard to tell the proper order of the runes. Some were easily guessable, others were entirely cryptic. Occasionally, we had to guess at which runes were part of the puzzle, making it even more challenging. We used a lot of hints. After about an hour, we took a break to continue the next day. The app rebooted, meaning we had to repeat everything we had already done. That was a bit more frustration added on. We finally made it through, though we were more motivated by completing it than having a great time.
This was the first Unlock! box that was more disappointing than fun. It has some interesting ideas but the implementation did not work for us.
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