EXIT: The Sunken Treasure

My husband and I have done 2 real escape rooms and loved them both. During the quarantine I wanted to find something non-electronic that we could do together and a cooperative game sounded like just the thing. We started the EXIT series with the Mysterious Museum (a level 2), then Secret Lab (3 1/2). Since then we’ve also played Pharoah’s Tomb (4) and Sunken Treasure (2) and have Forgotten Island (3) and Forbidden Castle (4) waiting in the wings. Having done four of these games so far, this is what I have to say: We are absolutely AMAZED at the cleverness. I’m particularly amazed that although each game follows the same basic format (i.e. once you’ve played one you will know quickly how to play the rest), each one is completely and utterly different in terms of theme and puzzles to solve. We have seen no duplications of anything, though each game does give you more ideas about how to think for the next one. We time each clue and then enjoy going back over what stumped us. Some puzzles took 1-3 minutes, others took 20-30 minutes or more. On the first game my husband felt we were stuck too long at one point so he went for a clue, but I was sorely disappointed that we did that. Since then we tough it out - NO CLUES! Though after we’ve escaped the room it’s fun to go back and read them. Also - these are one and done games. In other words, once you solve it you won’t want to do that again (unless some time has passed and you have a terribly memory) because it’s one solution - one game. There is no variation if you play it again. BUT... for the price - it’s cheaper than two movie tickets (also one and done) and totally worth it for an evening of entertainment. They say you have to cut/tear/bend and while that’s true we managed to keep each of the games in tact and passed them along to friends. Sometimes it SAYS to cut so we cut and just taped back together. If bending was required we used our imagination so as not to deface the game or give clues to the next players. We were able to make it happen each time. So technically you can pass it along if you want to, but even if you didn’t - like I say - cheaper than going to the movies. How many people? One could do it. Two was perfect for us. MAYBE three, but the caveat is that the pieces are small and can only be looked at by a couple people at a time. If you had a group of 4 or 5, someone will be waiting. Two people is great because the ones I got quickly, he wouldn’t have and visa versa. My only complaint: the writing is quite small on some of the pieces making it really difficult for me to read. My younger-eyed husband didn’t have a problem, but if it were just me the tiny print on some of the cards would have taken away some of the joy. So far we’ve had four great date nights and had a blast. The people who aren’t liking this game obviously just bought the wrong game for them. Go into it understanding and accepting the challenge and you will do just fine. The clues are pretty good and are progressive... so lets say you take a clue and you already had figured that out - it won’t count against you and you have two more progressive clues to check if you’d like. So there is no reason you can’t finish or understand the game. Be patient, clever, and think outside the box (or sometimes inside the box, but I digress...) LOVE.THESE.GAMES. !!!

I did this with my 9 year old son, who is very smart and loves puzzles. We downloaded the app and listened to the introduction. It was a little slow to get through but better than reading them aloud myself. We REALLY enjoyed the puzzles. This was difficulty level 2 of 5, which I felt was perfect for us. We did use the help cards on a few, and only used the solution card on one particularly difficult puzzle. It took us about 2 hours or so to complete and we both had fun the entire time. Even though the box is small and there aren’t a lot of props, it really had some ingenuous puzzles that were fun using just the decoder, cards and book. This game had my son so excited that afterwards he saved the decoder and made his own games for his little brothers quite a few times! In my mind that’s the best kind of game - one that inspires creativity to make new games from it. It’s a little bit of a shame that the game can only be used once because you Mark and cut it up, but there are certain puzzles we could keep and my son could use in his own made up games. The price is totally worth a few hours of fun and all of the creativity that flowed from it. Now a days it’s more about the experience than the material objects! I already bought another one - we’ll do a couple level 2 before advancing to level 3. I think once you do a few you learn how to think like the puzzles.

This was a Christmas gift from my husband. I love these types of games/puzzles, and this was my first Exit game. I played it by myself over the course of 2 days. It took me about 3 hours to complete, and I needed 2 help cards, which puts me at 6 stars in the assessment. The reason I am giving 4 stars instead of 5 is because I think they left something out of the instructions that is important to know, especially for 2 Riddles. If they had said this in the instructions I probably would not have needed the 2 help cards I used1 and it would have taken me considerably less time to solve, but as it is there was no way I would have solved the riddle without the help cards. The information they left out of the instructions is; *possible spoiler to follow* that you might need the actual game box for some of the Riddles. 2 of them in this game. * end possible spoiler* One of the Riddles actually tells you this, and one does not. The one that does not comes before the one that does and so I had no clue. They should have included this tidbit in the 'Where is the game board?' section, or in the riddle itself. I also recieved the Enchanted Forest game and I am excited to get into it! I would definitely recommend this to anyone who likes these sorts of games/puzzles. I will be getting more myself in the near future!

My family just played Exit: The Sunken Treasure tonight after dinner. We are two middle aged adults and two young adults (16 & 20). I've never done an escape room before but my daughters have. We all thought this game was really fun. It took us just under two hours to finish and we only used two hint cards, both for the same puzzle, which really had us stumped. All of the other puzzles, at least one of us was able to get the "a-ha!" moment and figure them out. If you love brain teasers, codes, puzzles, treasure hunts, or "point and click" adventure games on PC or mobile, you might like this. If that's not really your thing, then this game probably isn't for you. However, you may still enjoy the story and have a good time watching others work on the puzzles, maybe even be the "narrator" and read the story book and cards for them as they go along. It's possible to play this game alone, too, if you really want to do an escape room type of experience but don't have anyone to play with. In case it isn't clear, this one has a difficulty of 2 out of a possible 5, so it's good as a starting point, to see if you'd be interested in the harder Exit games. Probably wouldn't work very well playing with others via Skype, Twitch, Zoom, etc, because there are several pieces that you'll need to examine closely and interact with in order to solve the puzzles.

College aged kids loved playing!!

The Sunken Treasure is the second game in the EXIT series that my wife and I have played, the other being The House of Riddles (THOR). Both games are rated at Level 2 difficulty, but The Sunken Treasure is SIGNIFICANTLY more difficult than THOR... to the point where either this should be a '3' or THOR should be a '1'. Here's a paradox: Although I'm rating The Sunken Treasure lower than THOR (3 vs 4), my wife and I enjoyed playing it more. I personally liked that the decoder disc was keyed by either numbers or sea creatures. I thought that was a fun twist (though everything was kind of small, requiring a magnifying glass to read). In general, the riddles were more fun to solve and more rewarding (i.e. challenging). In fact, if it weren't for two riddles in particular that were ridiculously lame and/or incomprehensible, this game would have received a much higher rating. WARNING: The next few paragraphs contain spoilers. I'm not going to be giving out answers or describing methodology--that's what the Help Cards are for--but you will gain a distinct advantage through this insight that you wouldn't normally have during the course of play, and it may detract from your experience. [Actually, it might help contribute to your enjoyment; but it's still insight you wouldn't normally have.] ============= Begin spoiler section. ============= Between The Sunken Treasure and THOR, there is a trend that I consider detrimental to the game. The packaging (box, rule book, etc) is considered part of the playing pieces. First of all, in the game setup instructions they tell you to put the special objects off to the side, to be used later in the game as we "discover" them. Then why not tell us up front that the packaging is considered part of the special objects, too, and tell us when we discover those? But my biggest beef with the use of packaging in the game is the basic premise of the game. We're supposed to be trapped in a room (or in this case a sunken wreck) and need to find a way out. How does a game box, for example, fit into the theme of being trapped in a wreck? Did there just happen to be an EXIT game box in the wreck (that didn't disintegrate after being waterlogged for hundreds of years)? This is a fundamental disconnect from the basic premise of the game, and in my opinion detracts significantly from the experience. One such riddle in The Sunken Treasure took my wife and me 45 minutes to solve (we do try to use brainpower first before resorting to Help Cards)... and we'd still be trying to solve it if we hadn't used a Help Card which directed us to the packaging. That's unbelievably frustrating. There was another riddle that also took us 45 minutes to solve... and actually, we never solved it. We had to look at the solution card. We knew the methodology to use, we did everything we should have done, but making the leap from the method's output to the actual solution, well, that was really a stretch. "Thinking outside the box" is one thing--and that's just fine--but this was way beyond the box, and I still contend that there was no reasonable connection. ============= End of spoiler section. ============= So two riddles alone took us 90 minutes. In and of itself, I really don't mind that. It merely means I get to enjoy more time with my wife engaging in a fun activity; but I'm not lying when I say that I had a headache by the time the game ended. Part of the reason for that was because of the two riddles, for sure, but the main contributor was the poor quality printing on the cards and story book. They chose a very bad background color & texture, and the writing was barely perceptible. Lots of glare, too. We didn't have these problems with THOR, but it was bad with The Sunken Treasure. There are some things in the story line that don't make sense (to me), but it's just a story. A game. It doesn't have to be 100% cohesive to be enjoyable. Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the waste from the "once and done" game materials. This game can't be passed on to other family members or friends, or even a thrift store, when you're finished with it. Overall, it was fun playing The Sunken Treasure. There are some frustrating moments--at least there were for me--but it was an entertaining way to spend an evening with my wife. There is no way this particular EXIT game could be enjoyed by more than two players, though (IMO). Everything is just too small. For a couple, though... go for it!

We opened this the day after receiving, as we were ready for something new during quarantine. We have been to several physical escape rooms, so I thought this would be easy for us. It still took us 73 minutes to solve. There was one puzzle we definitely would NOT have gotten without hints, but we ended up using only 6 hint cards total so we thought that was pretty good. Once you get into the game and get the hang of looking up your "answers" in the cards to see if you are correct, it flows easier. I had purchased an additional one at the same time, so looking forward to that now that we understand how the game works. We are a family of 4, with an 18 year old and a 10 year old. We left most of the puzzles to the kids so they could enjoy, and everyone of us ended up contributing directly to solving at least one puzzle. I feel this was a good starter game for this genre, and we are looking forward to additional ones from the same company. As a matter of fact, I'm going to look now to see which additional titles are available (and definitely check reviews for quality of puzzles). Considering regular escape rooms cost 25 - 30 pp, this was a fantastic value and well worth it for just over an hour of family fun time, quarantine or not.

I absolutely loved doing this game. I played it by myself (mom of a 7 year old; wife to a man that's more into video games than board games) late at night. I'm an introvert, so a 1 person game piqued my interest and I've wanted to try the escape room variety. The story line on this was nice. The puzzle were great. Not too frustrating, but a couple that left me wondering what they wanted me to do. Given this was my very first escape room of any type, I did need to use a hint card to figure out one of the clues as I was completely stumped. Later in the game, my mind had been trained to think of using more than just the booklet & cards so I was able to quickly figure out another clue. You will need EVERYTHING that comes in the cellophane wrapping. Everything. I really liked that about this game. Even though it's meant to be a one-time use game, I did want to save it to be used later on with my family. If you binge-watch TV, you know what it's like to forget most and be able to play the game like it's new again. If you'd like to save it or pass it along, make a copy of pages 7 & the back cover before you start. Everything else I was able to either trace with my finger or use my phone to take pictures of where things were laid out. One clue "requires" you to cut cards, but I was able to lay them out in a way that didn't need them to be cut to figure out the clue. App's Timer: I really liked this portion. It added ambient sounds (that changed depending on where you should be in the game, though some might find the underwater breathing annoying...no spoilers there...you're in a shipwreck, after all) and I liked that the timer could be paused even if I logged out of the app and finished the game another day.