EXIT: The Game Series

Puzzle escape rooms are popping up everywhere these days. With the combination of clever thinking in the face of time pressure and exciting themes, they are a blast.

Taking those physical rooms as inspiration, the much-hyped new EXIT series of games has landed to huge critical acclaim. The winner of 2017 Kennerspiel des Jahres (Enthusiast Game of the Year) award, there are many titles to chose from and more are being added

EXIT: The Abandoned Cabin, EXIT: The Secret Lab, and EXIT: The Pharaoh’s Tomb are individual adventures that don’t need to played in any particular order.  Each contain some radically different puzzles/riddles. One will see you trapped in a pyramid’s tomb on an Egyptian holiday. Another will have you discovering a medical volunteering job has become much more than you bargained for. Along with the components found in the box, you might want to grab some pens, paper, and scissors to help in your challenge.

What makes this series of games special is the frankly INSANE creativity that comes with the puzzles they present. It is almost impossible for me to give examples without spoiling the amazing ‘AH HAH’ moments, but rest assured they will require you to really think outside the box (or sometimes around the box?). Puzzles see you drawing and cutting and constructing and other verbs that would give too much away…

Having played these now with groups of both 2 and 4 players, I can say that they work well in different ways. The two-player game has us more focused on racing the clock for a high rating. However having the extra heads to bounce puzzles off,  made the bigger group very handy.

I want to rant and rave about how genuinely surprising this game’s become, but I have to contain myself as going in knowing as little as possible is the ideal situation. What I can say is that the decoder and card system the game employs is both ingenious and super easy to get a hang of. Plus having access to optional hints for each challenge is a nice safety blanket to have, and even when we had to resort to one or two hints the solutions always felt fair and had that ‘AHHH of COURSE!’ moment.

With the scorching heat outside at the moment, filling an evening with some head-smacking puzzles and ‘whoop’-inducing triumph is so easy and fun with the EXIT games.

I am chomping at the bit to finish work and get home to finish our last box…

Check out the Exit: the Game series here at Presents of Mind.