Game Review: EXIT Advent Calendar: Silent Storm

EXIT Advent Calendar: Silent Storm designed by Inka and Marcus Brand and published by KOSMOS

See my review of EXIT Advent Calendar: The Golden Book.

This is another adaptation of the EXIT: The Game system as an Advent calendar, with one puzzle to solve each day of December before the 25th. In this game, players are elves in Santa's workshop but a calamity has happened, an earthquake and a storm. Santa hit the emergency button which has the whole place on lock-down. Things are so jumbled that someone needs to get back to the control center and get the situation back to normal. Each puzzle deals with a different room, e.g. the stuffed-animal-making room, the candy-making room, etc. A tear-off booklet has one page of story for each day along with some hints on how to solve that day's puzzle. The "rooms" in the calendar typically have one or more puzzle cards and maybe some strange items, like these, behind the doors.

What sort of magic makes a button larger than a tray of cookies!

The items help make a good variety of puzzles. Scissors and writing implements are needed to complete some of the puzzles, along with the ability to spot clues all over the rooms, the box, the manuals, and everything else. The diversity in puzzles is fun. Even if we fell behind a day or two and had to catch up, each puzzle is only five or ten minutes long to solve at the most and is different enough that we did not feel like we were doing the same thing over and over.

This set is rated as an easier one, with puzzle that are not too hard to solve. We only went to the hint book two or three times to find out solutions we couldn't achieve on our own (which is typical for us playing EXIT games). The last couple of days have a fun twist to the story and, like any Christmas story, it ends very happily for all concerned. 

Recommended, highly for EXIT fans.

Game Review: EXIT: Advent Calendar--The Golden Book

EXIT The Game: Advent Calendar--The Golden Book designed by Inka and Markus Brand, published by Kosmos

In the EXIT The Game series, players work their way through a series of puzzles related to a narrative in the individual game. Basically, each is an escape room in a box. This latest innovation has the players opening doors on a custom Advent Calendar, each door revealing a puzzle that has be solved in order to find the next door to open.

In this story, Santa's Golden Book has been stolen. The book contains everyone's addresses and what they want for Christmas, so it is a very important tool for his job. Players follow clues left behind by the thief. The puzzles are themed after many different Christmas things, from that Mariah Carey song to Die Hard to the Magi's Journey to Bob Cratchit's office. Like other EXIT games, sometimes components or images from one puzzle are used for a later puzzle, so never throw anything away! In fact, one of the first puzzles has some components that the players sneak behind another door for a later challenge. The theme is fun and follows both the Christmas setting and the EXIT traditions.

The puzzles use the usual assortment of pieces--cards, pictures, and "odd" objects (one of which is a jingle bell!). The game includes 24 puzzles, so players can start on December 1 and end on Christmas Eve. The puzzles are short enough (five to fifteen minutes) that any missed days can be easily made up. The decoder for the game has sliding numbers that show how to find the next door.

Front of the decoder with "555" as the solution

Back of the decoder

The players follow the arrows from that day's door (Up Left, Down Left, Down in the above picture) to another door and see if the three symbols on that door match (Crescent, Crescent, Star in the above picture). It works well and has a nice, clever feel to it. I would include a picture, but you write numbers on the doors so any photo would have massive spoilers on it. At least the random placement of numbers makes sense on this Advent calendar!

The puzzles are not too difficult. We needed hints a few times and accidentally discovered a component for a later puzzle once. We enjoyed the variety of challenges and the creative ways they used the box and the components. The game is very Christmasy. We will definitely get the next Exit the Game Advent Calendar next year!

Highly recommended!

Cute Kid Pix November 2021

Some more pictures that didn't get their own posts...

My daughter's middle school orchestra class had a guest performance at the high school where most of the kids will go in a couple of years. The middle school is split between two high schools and, based on where we live right now, she will go to the other high school. She was happy to go anyway--they served pizza for dinner after the warm-ups and before the performance. The middle scholars wore white and black. The high scholars dressed only in black.

My view

The cello section (my daughter second from the right)

I was the only one who got up to see the lunar eclipse the night of the 18th (or really the morning of the 19th, since it peaked at 4:03 a.m. EST). The picture does not do it justice.

I need a better camera!

With the end of the liturgical year, we switched our Saint Joseph's altar to an Advent altar. The Year of Saint Joseph started last Advent and had me reading several books (some repeats) along with a novena or two. I also joined the men's group at our church. We meet on Saturday mornings at 6:45, so it's not for the feint of pillow. 

Goodbye!

The Advent calendar tree!

Book Review: Run, Shepherds, Run by L. William Countryman

Run, Shepherds, Run: Poems for Advent and Christmas by L. William Countryman

Countryman collects an assortment of poems for the Advent and Christmas seasons. There's a poem for each day, starting on the first day of Advent and ending on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany (the celebration of the wise men visiting the infant Jesus and giving Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh). The poems run a good historical range, from the 1600s to the present day. They are written by a mixture of famous and less famous writers. Like many anthologies, the set is a mixed bag of good and average works, though I will admit my tastes in poetry are underdeveloped. 

I liked the book for the most part though I do not think that in enhanced my yuletide spirituality, which seems to be the aim of Countryman, who is an Episcopalian priest. I may hunt around for a more edifying day-to-day Advent devotional.

Mildy recommended.

Preparing for Christmas 2016

Yesterday as I publish was Gaudete Sunday, the beginning of the third week of Advent. The priest wore his rose-colored vestments at Mass and people are lighting the pink candles on their Advent wreaths. Advent, the season of preparing for the coming of Christ, is half over. We have been preparing for Christmas at home, getting up our decorations.

We put our tree up last week and discovered we didn't have enough lights. Actually, we had two strings of lights "retire" since they weren't working anymore. We made a trip to the store to get some extra white lights (which are not extra-white, in case you are wondering).

Working together to build the tree

Sorting out limbs by length

The first placement/lighting of the tree

We decided to hold back on ornaments and let the children put one on when they did a good deed. So the tree is slowly filling up.

After more lights, a move, and some ornaments

While Granny was visiting, we put her to work on our new Advent calendar. It is a wooden tree with twenty-four drawers, one for each day of December before Christmas. We left numbers off so that the seven pink drawers could be switched around, since the third week of Advent isn't always the same days in the month (the third Sunday in Advent can be anywhere from December 11 to 17).

Awesome looking Advent Calendar (thanks, Granny!)

We also have a wreath for our dinner table which the kids are always excited to use. It's a Celtic ring, so it doesn't have the usual greenery. We are okay with that since we need the table space for food and stuff.

Blowing out the candles

My daughter has decorated a gingerbread house. She loves the kits (that way we don't have to bake the walls, roof, etc.). It turned out quite well.

Front of the gingerbread house

Back of the house

Advent Chain 2012

My wife thought a good project for the kids would be making an Advent Chain. The project is pretty easy: print out some pages, cut them up into strips, staple the strips into little circles or chain links. You just have to be sure to loop the second strip through the first strip before stapling!  The kids were really excited to use the stapler and carefully kept track of whose turn it was to staple each loop.

Making the chain

Each of the 24 strips has a bible verse and a little ornament for coloring. It starts on December 1, so this year it begins on Advent eve (if there is such a thing), since December 2 is the first Sunday of Advent. Just thought I'd pass it along in case anyone wants a simple and satisfying project to do at home. (Plus it lets me post a picture of the family having fun at home!)

She got the idea from Simcha Fisher's blog. The pdf for printing out the chain is here.