Game Review: Exit the Game Series

Exit The Game Series created by Inka and Markus Brand

The Exit The Game series is often referred to as an "escape room in a box." Escape rooms are a recent entertainment phenomenon where a group of people are locked in a room filled with puzzles and given an hour to unlock the door by solving all the puzzles. It's a fun challenge that we tried in Florida. Having that experience at home is more convenient and cheaper, though not as thrilling as a room with secret compartments and doors.

To replace the actual physical locks and puzzles, Exit The Game uses a booklet, some decks of cards, the occasional odd item, and a small decoder disk with a three number (or symbol) code that indicates a card in the Answer deck.

Components from an Amazon photo

The game starts with the booklet and usually one of the riddle cards, enough to solve at least one puzzle. Each proper answer reveals more of the Riddle cards (and maybe one of the odd items), which give new problems to solve or more information about a problem already available. Quite often, the players need to write on, fold, or cut apart game materials to solve the puzzles. So the game can only be played once, unless you do a lot of photocopying like we did for several of the games.

The system works surprisingly easily and makes for exciting moments when the players check the answer deck to see if they solved a puzzle correctly. The first three games collectively won the Kennerspiel des Jahres for 2017, the highest gaming award in Germany. As of this writing, the number of available games in English is ten (see what Amazon currently has here). Here's our experience with five of those ten.

The first game we played was The Forgotten Island. Our day started with a fine leisure sailing excursion. A dark storm came up and forced us onto a mysterious island with many locked items, including a boat, and no food or water. Not escaping could be fatal!

The game is rated three out of five for difficulty with an expected playing time of one to two hours. We finished our game in a little over an hour and a half, using eight help cards. So we earned three stars (out of a possible ten) according to the scoring system. Not bad for a first time play, we thought. The puzzles were enjoyable though two or three of them were completely incomprehensible to us. We assumed future plays would be easier. At least we made it off the island without dying! Though a couple of hours on a tropical island hardly seems fatal, unlike our next experience...

Our second game was The Polar Station (also rated three out of five for difficulty). We were scientists at a polar lab that went into lockdown. The next door lab was destroyed. It was working on a weird black oozing material that infected the lab workers. The assumption was that our lab may get infected too. The only way to ensure our humanity was to challenge us with locks that only human logic could solve.

We put our logic to the test. Unfortunately, we started just before bedtime for the kids, so we did about an hour that Saturday night. We finished the next day but forgot to check the clock. Our nine-year old daughter was distraught Saturday night, fearing nightmares from the story's theme. She had trouble falling asleep but no nightmares. We completed the game with only four hints, so we did much better on that front. Since we didn't have an official time we didn't calculate a score. We didn't really care. The game was fun.

Our third game was The Secret Lab (rated three and a half out of five for difficulty). We were volunteers for a medical research experiment. At the lab, we were the only ones who showed up. Gas from a test tube knocked us out! Waking up, we found ourselves locked in. The locked door was the only way out from this mysterious experiment!

We started the game after dinner on a weeknight and got about an hour in before the kids ran out of energy (not learning from our previous adventure). We had two more sessions of working the puzzles and came to a satisfactory conclusion. By this game, we'd given up on tracking time and calculating a score. Despite a bunch of bio-hazard signs and the slightly ominous set-up, the game was much less scary. Even so, our daughter had little interest in the game. Our older son especially enjoyed it.

Our fourth game was The Sunken Treasure (rated two out of five stars for difficulty). We were explorers looking for the wreckage of the Santa Maria, a legendary treasure ship lost in the Caribbean. We started our adventure on a boat but pretty soon were underwater searching around a sunken ship.

By this point, we were getting used to the style of puzzles. That, combined with the two-star-rated difficulty, made this an easy and highly enjoyable "escape room" experience. We moved quickly through the puzzles. We probably should have timed ourselves but we'd gotten out of the habit (and probably won't get back into it). I'd recommend this as the first game if you want to check out the series.

Our fifth game was The Pharoah's Tomb (rated four out of five stars for difficulty). We were tourists visiting the Egyptian Pyramids and got trapped inside one of the tombs! Luckily, a previous adventurer, one Dr. H. Ford, left a bunch of clues on how to escape.

Even with the higher difficulty level, we didn't have an especially hard time with this one. The puzzles have the same style, so we were looking in all the right places for extra clues and information. Only two of the puzzles stumped us enough to have us take a hint from the hint deck. A few Indiana Jones easter eggs in the game (like the adventurer's name) added to the fun. We again took two sessions to complete the game.

If you want to buy one or more of these games, or one of the other games in the series, check Amazon here or go to your local friendly gaming store! We recommend them highly and will play more in the future!