Game Review: Unlock! Supernatural Adventures by Space Cowboy

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.

Game Review: Unlock! Legendary Adventures by Space Cowboys

Unlock! Legendary Adventures (2021) published by Space Cowboys, designed by Matthieu Casnin, Marion du Faouet, and Dave Neale

This set of "escape rooms at home" use a set of 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 a surprise set of components.

Action Story--Stella's stolen a jewel of immense value and you are in hot pursuit! Luckily, you have a James Bond-like car with a grappling hook and all sorts of tunes to listen to. The high speed chase quickly morphs into something quite different in an enjoyable way as the puzzles keep coming.

This is supposed to be the easiest challenge in the box but I found a bunch of the puzzles were not at all obvious how they should be solved, including the final puzzle which was unfortunate. I used some hints and the walk-through to get through tight spots. I really enjoyed the theme but the implementation could have been a lot better.

Robin Hood: Dead or Alive--Players are part of the Merry Men, working with Robin Hood to rob from the rich and give to the poor. Things quickly turn against Robin, who winds up in the Sheriff of Nottingham's jail. It's up to the players to get Robing out of the jam he is in. Solving puzzles lets players explore a bit of Robin's world and do some of the iconic deeds like fighting with quarterstaffs and doing trick shots with a bow and arrow.

The game play is a little tricky, relying on a lot of in-app bits to unlock the next puzzle or challenge. Some were a bit hard to follow, like the bard whose song needs to be decrypted to get one of the codes. We had a couple of misfires and needed hints. Most of the mechanics were fun, including some additional components we didn't know about. We enjoyed the game but found it a bit harder than it needed to be.

We almost ran out of time but still got four stars. We need to improve our cyber-archery skills!

Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Burnt Angels--Players help out Sherlock Holmes as he investigates three murders in London. The murderer is a man named Red Henry who seems to be bent on some sort of revenge. The clues take the investigation all over London, requiring a lot of movement and a lot of observation.

This is the hardest-rated adventure on the box. Players get the usual deck of cards and a special "magnifying glass" which is a heavier card with a whole cut in the middle. For certain clues, this "magnifying glass" helps to find the right number for the next card. One of those clues was a bit of a stretch and we only found out what we were supposed to do afterwards. A couple of cards come together to form a map and players use the app to travel to London locations where further clues (i.e. cards) are revealed. The whole investigation worked fairly well with only a few hiccups here and there for us. We enjoyed it, though we did pause in the middle for bedtime and had to restart the adventure in the app the next day. Catching up wasn't hard.

The Holmes adventure was my favorite in this set. I would definitely try more Unlock! games in the future.

Game Review: Unlock! Game Adventures by Space Cowboys

Unlock! Game Adventures by Space Cowboys

In the equivalent of a Marvel Cinematic Universe crossover like the Avengers films, the Unlock! escape room series has a set that features three scenarios based on other board games! In an interesting twist, the games are not all published by Space Cowboys, so it's like Marvel crossed over with DC and Dark Horse. Here's the game-by-game rundown...

Ticket To Ride--players are in a story derived from the Ticket to Ride base game (set in the USA). Several family members (not the players but characters in the story) own various routes and are trying to combine to get a transcontinental railroad. Some mysterious shenanigans are going on, with sabotage and backroom dealings aplenty. Players are reporters from a New York newspaper trying to get the scoop on what the family is doing. The game includes elements from the Ticket to Ride game beyond the art. The interesting storyline leads to the ultimate solution that is satisfactory and not too hard to get to. 

I enjoyed this as an imaginative use of the franchise, especially the turn-of-twentieth-century railroad life setting. We did fairly well even with a few wrong guesses on combining cards.

Mysterium--Players are a group of psychic investigators who visit an early twentieth-century estate where a death has happened. The house is haunted by the ghost but luckily the players are just the sort to get information from the spirit to find out if the death was murder, how it was committed, and who was the culprit. So, yeah, it was a murder, no surprise there.

This game does a good job bringing in elements of the original game. The mystery is slowly solved using visions and some deduction to solve the riddles and get to the details of what happened. The flow is natural and uses the app in interesting ways. One puzzle didn't work for us even after getting the hint though the problem was a physical mechanical issue. We did take a couple of hints at points just to make sure we were on the right track. The ending is satisfying and made me nostalgic for the original game.

Pandemic--Like the board game, players are specialists hunting down cures for a variety of diseases that have broken out across the globe. Unlike, the board game, players are also hunting down "patient zero" who is the source of at least one of the diseases. It's a race both against the clock and all over the world. 

While using the basic scenario of Pandemic, the execution is terrible. A lot of the puzzles are inexplicably hard. We missed the very first thing we were supposed to do (an action that does not make sense in the Pandemic system), which threw off the puzzle we were working on. The slow start led off to a lot of other hard-to-guess puzzles. When we checked the walk-through provided with the game, we did not have the "ahh, that's what we were supposed to do" moments, we had the "did they really expect people to think that way?!?" moments. The experience was very frustrating and our nine-year old walked out halfway through. Mom and I muscled our way to the end just for the sense of completion. We did not get a sense of satisfaction. This is the worst Unlock game we have ever played! Even worse than that stupid island one.

Of the three games, Msyterium was our favorite. It had the spirit (!) of the original and great execution, blending the Unlock! system nicely with the Mysterium gameplay and narrative. Overall, we'd recommend this set, but have a lot of patience and willingness to get help with the Pandemic module.

Recommended.

Game Review: Unlock! Timeless Adventures by Space Cowboy

Unlock! Timeless Adventures designed by Aristide Bruyant, Cyril Demaegd, Guillaume Montiage, and Yohan Servais and published by Space Cowboys

Another set of three Unlock! escape room-style games in one box. Each of the games is a deck of cards and one supporting item that is used in one or more of that game's puzzles. The box also comes with the standard tutorial deck.

The first adventure is "The Noside Show." Infamous Professor Noside has taken over a traveling circus. Players similar to those in previous Noside adventures. The game even comes with a circus program that is part of the puzzles. We found this quite delightful and imaginative though we did brute-force our way through one of the puzzles, thus the eight minutes of machine penalties below. Maybe that's why we got the thoroughly average three-star score? The experience was a lot of fun.

"Arsene Lupin and the Great White Diamond" is an adventure in Paris circa 1900. Arsene Lupin is a famous gentleman burglar who has set a challenge for the orphans of Paris. Lupin has stolen a 180 karat diamond from the world expo and hidden it somewhere in the city. The players are a group of orphans chasing around, solving puzzles and traps set by Lupin and by another roving gang of orphans. The theme is a lot of fun and very engaging. In addition to the deck of cards, there's a letter from Lupin with a map of Paris on the back showing various places to investigate. The puzzles are enjoyable and, I thought, easier than the Noside adventure. I only used one hint and sailed along quickly and happily through the adventure.

"Lost in the ChronoWarp" has the player investigating the disappearance of Alcibiades Tempus, a friend who lives nearby. In his living room are clues that lead to a time traveling adventure that goes far into the past and the future. The player puts together clues to get the professor back to his own time and to restore the temporal order. The deck of cards is enhanced by a fold-out picture of Tempus's living room which changes as the game progresses (the player lays cards over the picture to change the images). I was bummed when the television changed from a weather report to a nuclear armageddon report! I did say the player has to restore the temporal order. I enjoyed most of the puzzles. The very first puzzle was inexplicable to me. Even after using the in-app hints to get the solution, I am not really sure anyone would get the first puzzle without brute forcing or making a very lucky guess. After that, the rest was a lot easier. I was surprised to see a four-star rating at the end. I was sure I did too many wrong things to get a good rating. 

Overall, this is another fun set of Unlock! games. The extra component in each made for a more interesting challenge. My favorite was the Lupin adventure--it captured the race against time the best and brought back happy memories of visiting Paris. The time travel was a lot of fun too with the shifts in narrative as the player changes things in Tempus's past and nearly ruining his future.

Recommended.

Game Review: Unlock! Mythic Adventures by Space Cowboys

Unlock! Mythic Adventures published by Space Cowboys 

This box of three adventures in the Unlock! system (a deck of cards plus an app, sometimes some extra materials that fit in the box) provides some more of that "escape room at home" fun.

In the Clutches of Hades 

Players are Alix, a young slave whose friend has been kidnapped by Hades. Living on a Greek island near a major temple, it's easy to find help from the gods and other clever people (see Icarus below). Getting to the underworld is not as easy as it may seem, if you want to come back alive!

The puzzles run the usual assortment from easy to inexplicable. Our team of three had a good time deciphering them even if it took us too long (twenty minutes over the usual hour limit!). We brought a variety of skills and insights, complimenting each other. This adventure was supposed to be the easiest one in the set which gave us some foreboding about the next two adventures. We really liked the theme, though detailed knowledge of Greek mythology is not required. Such knowledge does increase appreciation for the art and characters.

Professor Noside's Animal-O-Matic

Professor Noside, a recurring character in Unlock! games and a generally disreputable character, has invented a gun that will transfer your brain into an animal temporarily, if you use the left trigger on the gun. Well, you're a bit of a butterfingers and shot yourself into the cat with the right trigger, giving you an hour to get back into your right body. The trick is, the gun needs to be fully charged to reverse the situation. A spare battery is in the attic but you are locked in the kitchen. It's time to get creative (and get into some other animal bodies) to get that battery!

The puzzles were very imaginative in a good way. This game has a lot of "cartoon logic" that is fun and creative. We hit the usual one or two problems that mystified us but the game comes with a "walk-through" book in case players get stuck. We only consulted it twice. We had a lot of fun cycling through Professor Noside's whole menagerie. Our time was less over than the last puzzle, so that's good!

Around the World in Eighty Minutes

Based on the Jules Verne classic, this game recreates the adventures of Phileas Fogg who accepted a ridiculous challenge to travel around the world in eighty day. He lives in 1872, when the fastest transportation was a steam locomotive, so it's a lot harder to go quickly around the world than today. 

The game has a lot of compass- and map-related puzzles. The game even includes a foldout map with clues on it. This game was rated three locks, the most difficult. We did run up on more puzzles where we could not figure out what they wanted us to do. The printed walk-through was helpful here. We took a break in the middle of the game, pausing the app. When we returned, the app had gone back to the main screen, so a lot of our slow progress was lost. Thus, we wound up with a four-star rating on our solution, though we really did run overtime and had a few more penalties than was recorded. We enjoyed the theme a lot.

Overall, this is a good set of Unlock! puzzles and we'd recommend it to others. Some of the problems were too difficult even for adults, so your kids might (like ours) get bored and wander off. You know your family (or game group) the best.

Recommended.

Game Review: Unlock! Heroic Adventures plus Scheherazade's Last Tale

Unlock! Heroic Adventures published by Space Cowboys

We've played other Unlock! games (the Star Wars set and Night of the Boogeyman and a bunch of others) and have had mixed experiences. The Heroic Adventures set is highly rated so we decided to give it a go.

Unlock! games are escape room-type games that use a custom deck of cards and an app to solve a bunch of puzzles in an hour. The puzzles are thematically tied together to roughly follow a narrative (like an escape room). The app provides a timer, clues, some interactions (entering codes or solving puzzles on the app), and thematic music. 

The first adventure is Insert Coin. The players are a kid whose cell phone has run low on power and decides to play Grandpa's old arcade game in the attic. The game absorbs the kid and we had to play through several levels of video games that were clearly based on classics like Donkey Kong and Tetris. The game uses the app for some Augmented Reality challenges where cards have additional information on them when viewed through the camera on the apps device (we must have given the app permission to use the camera a while ago). The ending was especially fun and funny. We finished in time (just barely) and had one or two dings against us for using hints and bad guesses on puzzles. Still, we scored four stars, so not bad at all.

The second adventure is Sherlock Holmes - The Scarlet Thread of Murder. Players are assisting Holmes as he investigates a murder. Some of the cards were resources in the app, letting us look up information the way Holmes used reference books. Then we had to sift through evidence, identify some suspects, and solve some puzzles. A few puzzles were more than cryptic to us, including the last puzzle, unfortunately. We ran over time as well but still managed to score three stars. Not the most fun experience in spite of some clever use of the app.

The final game was In Pursuit of the White Rabbit, based on Alice in Wonderland. The puzzles share the whimsical and occasionally non-sensical narrative of Lewis Carroll's book. Players help the author find an ending for the crazy story he is crafting. We were a little intimidated by the timer starting at ninety minutes but the extra time was extra-entertaining, not extra-excruciating. We had fun solving the puzzles with some great "aha!" moments. We did take a few hints and the final puzzle was a little tricky to solve mechanically. Being familiar with classic story helps. This was much more enjoyable than the Sherlock Holmes mystery.

Overall, we had a good experience with this set on Unlock! games.

We also got a used copy of Scheherazade's Last Tale, one of the adventures in the Exotic Adventures set (they used to sell all the adventures individually). Scheherazade is the heroine of 1001 Nights, a source for Aladdin, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Sinbad the Sailor, among other tales. Players help Scheherazade as she gets down to the last tale and wants to escape the Vizier because she is really in love with the Sultan. Puzzles include working with a magic carpet to travel around the city and rubbing the magic lamp to get the Genie's help. Some moments were cryptic, but only a few. Some puzzles show up early but take a while to get solved which was a bit frustrating. The final puzzle wound up being a brute force solution for us because there were no good hints about the answer in the materials. Twenty-two minutes of penalties! I'm surprised we still scored three stars.

Recommended for escape-room-at-home fans.

Game Review: Star Wars: Unlock! The Escape Game

 Star Wars: Unlock! The Escape Game published by Space Cowboys

We have played many Unlock! games in the past, with mixed results. Most of the experiences were good but two or three of them had puzzles that made no sense to us at all, even after seeing the solution. So we are cautious about new Unlock! games. But the Star Wars theme was a "take my money right now!" moment. Or at least, "put that on my Amazon wish list right now!" Christmas morning saw me opening a highly anticipated gift.

The game has three separate escape game decks inside, along with a small intro deck to help new players learn the various game mechanics (like adding red and blue cards together, using lock codes on the app, and using machines on the app). We've played enough games that we jumped into the first game. 

The first games is Escape from Hoth. It covers the first act of The Empire Strikes Back, i.e. the battle on Hoth. All the story beats show up--riding a Tauntaun, fighting the Wampa, locating the probe droids, fixing the snow speeders, fighting the AT-AT assault, and escaping the Hoth base. The puzzles were fun and not too difficult. The play felt thematic and brought back a lot of happy memories of the movie. We had a few minor errors and scored four out of five.

A solid performance

The second games is An Unforeseen Delay. Players are smugglers for Jabba the Hutt who have been captured by an Imperial cruiser. The first task is to break out of a prison cell with the help of a cellmate. Then players sneak around trying to free their astromech (like R2-D2) and their impounded cargo before finding their ship and getting away. At one point, we had a Stormtrooper blaster rifle and my son wanted to shoot everything in sight. We held him back until we had a good reason to shoot. At another point, we had to communicate with the droid, played by one of us. The droid player was not allowed to talk and used the app to answer yes or no questions with R2-style beeps and boops. This game had some really fun puzzles and ended dramatically and satisfactorily. Our rating was five of five!

We were better as smugglers!

The third game is Secret Mission on Jedha. Players are Imperial agents looking for a lost case of kyber crystals. A ship crashed in the desert and the hunt is on for clues to where the case wound up. The variety of puzzles is fun. The story provides a nice narrative and was satisfying to finish. We played half one night, leaving the app open on my phone. The next day, we tried to finish up but the app had closed, losing our progress. My wife and I did a quick catch up to unlock the clues we had already discovered. Our score was five of five, with an asterisk since we didn't repeat our initial errors in the first run. Also, we probably had record time solving it.

22 minutes must be a record

This game has its own app which is good since the regular Unlock! app has a lot of games already in it. The music on the app is from Holst's The Planets, which surprised me. I guess the Star Wars license did not include the iconic music. Some of the iconic sound effects make it in, like the R2 beeps in the second game. Some puzzles are solved in the app. The variety of those puzzles is good and they take advantage of the touch screen and the ability to move the app device around. The app is indispensable for play and does add to the enjoyment.

The individual games also feature special ability cards for that particular game. Players choose three of the six cards, like "Droid expert" or "Ace pilot." The cards give hints on how to solve some of the puzzles. I didn't think they were necessary. The kids enjoyed picking out new abilities.

Recommended, highly for Star Wars fans.

Game Review: T.I.M.E Stories

T.I.M.E Stories designed by Manuel Rozoy, art by Pascal Quidault, and published by Space Cowboys

T.I.M.E Stories is a narrative-driven cooperative game with a role-playing element. The system is designed to be reused with multiple scenarios, or missions, that are sold separately and have been published every four to six months since the game's 2015 publication. The setting is a fun bit of science fiction:

People from the future have discovered not only time travel, but inter-dimensional travel as well. They've also detected various times and places where temporal disturbances threaten to cause irreparable damage to reality. The T.I.M.E. Agency (Tachyon Insertion in Major Events) is funded by the world's governments to prevent those disasters. Players are sent into others' bodies (called "receptacles" by the agency) in the past or in other dimensions. The players are agents who investigate and (hopefully) stop the disturbances. Players only have a certain amount of time, called a run, in which to complete the mission before they are pulled back to Agency Headquarters. Often, multiple runs are required in order to solve the problem. Everything resets at the start of a new run (or most everything--players still remember what happened and certain items with a special icon will remain in place). The more times players run, the lower their rank will be at the end of the game.

The game board (click to enlarge)

The game system is well-crafted. Each mission is driven by a deck of cards. The cards represent the various locations to be explored, a map of the area, a set of items, and the "receptacles" available to each player. When the players make a second run (which I think is probably inevitable) they can switch receptacles. The art is beautiful and the iconography is easy to understand.

Players have to discuss what they want to do at a location (the backs of the location cards tell what happens as the players interact with the environment or the characters there). They also have to agree on when to leave a location and where they will go. Playing in character is more fun but not necessary.

The first mission (which comes with the base game) takes the players to Paris in AD 1921. Unfortunately, they are not sipping coffee on the banks of the Seine, they are in an insane asylum. The receptacles are the inmates, meaning each player has some special power but also some problem that could impede progress. For example, one character is a drug addict and can use cocaine (represented in the game by blue disks) to improve chances at a skill check. But if he runs out of cocaine, he'll permanently lose a life point. Lose too many life points, and a character will die.

Some of the possible inmates to choose from

This particular mission has three skills--agility (used to pick locks, etc.), glibness (used to persuade other people), and fighting (used to attack other people). The number next to the skill represents how many dice to roll. Each die has a blank face, some faces with stars, and one with a skull. The stars help to overcome the checks; the skull means the character might take damage during the check.  So there's definitely some "roll" in the role playing.

Dice and card abilities

The story is intriguing, with plenty of help and red herrings from the staff and the other inmates at the asylum. The art is very evocative and fits the psychological horror theme well. The story is a bit dark and some of the puzzles are hard to solve, so I'd recommend it for teenagers and up.

The game plays two to four players. We played with three though four is probably a better number (at least for this mission). The game also has a way to "save" the game in the middle if players need a break. We completed the entire game in just under three hours. Usually we don't have that big a block of time for playing but we planned ahead.
The big draw back is that once you've played a mission, you can't replay it a second time. You already know the secrets and solutions. Maybe in a couple of years we will have forgotten and be able to enjoy it again. And we can certainly loan it to friends so they can have the experience.

We enjoyed the game very much and will be getting the next mission, The Marcy Case, which is  a modern day thriller. There's also an Ancient Egypt mission and another with dragons, so the system has good thematic variety.

Highly recommended!