An escape room in a box with a murder mystery element. I enjoyed the puzzles including one slightly unusual physical element but found that the murder mystery part frustrated me. A fun time for two players.

A review of the first Unlock! board game – a collection of three escape rooms with a nice variety of styles.

A review of the Owl’s Puzzle, the demo game for Argyx’s play at home adventure: Apocalypse. A fun introduction that convinced me to back their kickstarter project.

A great choice if you fancy a little alone time but still getting your escape room puzzle fix. A reasonable narrative and generally good puzzles make this a fun evening in.

A review of iDventure’s Unfinished Case of Holmes – a play at home game. While the outer packaging looked inauspicious, there was much to appreciate – well printed clues, a good storyline, a nice central prop and some puzzles that were enjoyable. Sadly, the puzzles didn’t match the rest of the experience, leaving us with a sense of frustration.

One of the strongest escape rooms in a box that I’ve played. It isn’t a match for a real escape room, but it’s a well constructed hour of fun with quality elements and good puzzles. A great way for enthusiasts to bridge the gap between escape rooms

A game with a long list of flaws that I somehow seemed to actually enjoy. Once you get over flimsy components, annoying red herrings, a dubious puzzle, insufficient puzzles, a disappointing story, off-theme puzzles and no real finale you’ll find a distinct sense of achievement in having finished the game (most likely after having waited for an email response to clue requests…).

ThinkFun’s second escape room in a box was good, somewhat brief, fun but suffered in comparison to their first outing and at times felt a little repetitive.

This escape room in a box massively exceeded my expectations and highlighted what a poor job some real life escape room do. A good theme and puzzles made this an engaging 45 minutes for four people. Expect to see more of these in the future!