Ephemeris of the Mind (Game Review) Escape Room: The Game - Puzzle Adventures: Secret of the Scientist
Time to read: 2 min read
Game Cover
Platform played on: Physical
Review
I’ve played several escape rooms in real life and once COVID hit, I’ve played some at-home escape rooms. I bought this particular escape room game a while back but have just gotten around to playing it. The premise is that the player is a police officer who is trapped in a mysterious mansion of a scientist. The gameplay involves solving various puzzles to progress, as well as solving jigsaw puzzles to build new rooms to explore.
My only references for at-home escape room games are the Unlock! series of games. Compared to the Unlock! games, this one is much more involved and the puzzles are much more elaborate and interesting. The app for this game is much simpler than that of Unlock! (the only real feature is to play music, which didn’t even work for me) and, due to how intricate the puzzle setups are, the game isn’t as replayable as Unlock!. The Unlock! games can be lent out to friends after completing but this game is a bit harder, as many of the pieces are printed on flimsy paper, so the game isn’t as durable and may not be able to be played after resetting a couple of times. Luckily, you can reprint many of the game assets from the game's website.
Despite the single-use nature of the game’s construction, the game is pretty well-designed. The jigsaw puzzles are well-done and I also like the puzzle decoder system for deciding the progression of the game. I played this with my girlfriend and we’re both science geeks so the theme really resonated with us.
Conclusion
A well-designed game to play on a Friday evening.