For my critical play I played EXIT: The House of Riddles, an escape room in a box made by Thames and Kosmos that makes players solve themed riddles to complete the game. The game includes a booklet, each page representing a different room. It is intended for up to 4 players, with themes that are accessible for families and both children and adults to play. The puzzles include logical riddles, decoding numbers, interpreting cryptic images, and more; by solving these puzzles, players come up with 3-digit codes that can then be used on a physical spinning component to “unlock” the next room, which is revealed by flipping to the next page in a provide booklet. In EXIT, the simplistic puzzles that are unique to each page (or “room”) and highly interactive riddles that incited physical movement made the game engaging and accessible. The game’s plot was quite simplistic, so the rules and solutions behind each discrete puzzle constituted much of the enjoyment that players got out of the experience as they tapped into the “challenge”, “discovery”, and “fellowship” types of fun.
Instructions from the first page of the game
This emphasis on delivering intellectual stimulation and satisfaction from solving puzzles to the players was evidenced by the straightforward plot and the many varied puzzles throughout the game. The players are “detectives” who have been trapped in a house and have to make their way out of a series of rooms. The description explains, “…they have designed their own escape rooms—rooms filled with riddles that have to be solved in order to find the exit” and that the player must use a decoder disk to make their way out of these rooms. The plot is easy to understand and simplistic; there is not much depth to the storyline, and it’s immediately evident to the player that they will be solving a series of puzzles. There were many different kinds of puzzles to solve, with the first requiring players to reveal numbers by connecting dots and the next making players spell out numbers with their bodies. Both took around just a minute to solve, which may have been made easier because we had 4 players who were all actively looking for clues. Connecting the dots was really simple and a good intro to the game while I got familiarized with what I needed to do, while spelling out the numbers with our bodies was fun and gave us a break from sitting down and working on the puzzle. It provided instant gratification to solve puzzles so quickly in sequence, and, though they weren’t too difficult, it was satisfying to complete them. I could definitely imagine a family or a group of younger children playing the game and enjoying themselves.
Clues and scratch paper from the first puzzle
One mechanic that I thought contributed to this satisfaction of solving riddles was the code wheel. Each puzzle would reveal 3 digits that could then be configured on the wheel and unlock an “answer number”, which, if correct, would allow us to move on to the next page. I would check the correctness of these numbers through answer cards and, if I needed any help, I could flip over a clue card to see the corresponding clue. Though these cards and the wheel are intended to help reveal the answers to us, they also contributed to the feeling of being a detective and having to sleuth out the answers. Working with the physical components was satisfying, and felt like a small puzzle in of itself.
Image of the decoder wheel and three types of cards.
To address the ethics question: EXIT assumes that players have basic knowledge of ciphers and certain riddle-solving patterns, as well as physical capabilities to manipulate components precisely. For instance, one puzzle labelled differently colored books with certain letters, then revealed an image of the books scrambled in different orders. Then, the player had to spell out the words again to figure out the relevant clue. This solution may come more intuitively to those who have played more puzzle games. However, this and other mentally stimulating challenges were mostly quite easy and felt accessible to different experience levels. There weren’t any particular references that were necessary to solve the puzzles, though EXIT provides hint cards to move struggling players in the right direction. What may have been less accessible, however, was the physical movement required at some parts. At one point in the game, players had to cut up a piece of paper as a part of solving a riddle, and they were also encouraged to write on the booklet itself as they solved puzzles and found clues. This unique format of manipulating the game components lends more physical satisfaction to many players. However, it may also make the game less accessible to those with motor issues. The code wheel requires three layers of matching and parts to spin, and it was sometimes annoying to have to configure and precisely spin the wheel to provide the number I wanted.
In all, EXIT’s puzzles and their simple mechanics made for an enjoyable and accessible play experience. I normally find myself drawn to narrative-heavy stories that follow a plotline but, with EXIT, I enjoyed the opportunity to collaborate with friends and solve small brain teasers with every puzzle. SInce most clues were unique and applicable only in the scope of the room they were in, I came to think less about the game’s story and instead treat each page flip as the chance to solve another problem and get some satisfaction from it.
