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.