Game Review: Exit: The Game: The Sacred Temple by Kosmos

Exit: The Game: The Sacred Temple designed by Inka and Marcus Brand and Joliane Voorgang and published by Kosmos

The Exit: The Game series has come out with a new twist. They've added jigsaw puzzles! We played The Sacred Temple, where the players follow their archeology professor's clues to try and stop some treasure hunters from robbing a remote, hidden temple the professor has discovered. 

Some of the components

The game has the usual random pieces and the clue-deciphering wheel (which players get to assemble). The narrative and some clues are given in "journals" that have to be opened in sequence as puzzles are solved. The game has four 88-piece jigsaw puzzles, a size that isn't difficult to solve. The pictures on the puzzles help to solve the journal puzzles. Sometimes the jigsaw pieces are used in different ways by the journal puzzles, a nice use of the materials. 

The game does not come with the usual deck of cards. The journals replace the narrative cards and the back of the instruction manual has the hints for the various puzzles (eliminating the hint cards). The creators did a good job having the first few clues on one page and the solution on the back of the page, making it difficult to accidentally see the right answer for a different puzzle. The puzzles are solved in order so there's no worry of looking for clues where the facing page shows unsolved solutions.

Index to clues on the back cover

The other fun innovation about the solutions is that when the player lines up the right numbers on the code wheel, a little window on the back shows whether the answer is right or not. Occasionally we hit a solution for a different color lock but it was pretty easy to ignore the wrong solution and keep playing.

Right solution for the pink puzzle

Not right for any puzzle

We enjoyed the game. The recommended time is two to three hours though we didn't time ourselves since we enjoy solving the puzzles, not rushing to the solution. We finished it in two sessions since, with the kids, we don't have large blocks of free time. It's well worth the price--we'll play the other jigsaw Exit: The Game games.