Won't post a picture for Spoiler reasons!
As someone who works at an Escape Room business, this was AWESOME! Escape Rooms have been a rapidly growing industry for the last 3 or 4 years, and within the last year, people have begun to ask "Is there a way to take an Escape Room experience at home?" And until just a few short months ago, there hasn't really been an ideal option. Escape Room: The Game by Spin Master was a good start, but it just didn't satisfy my Escape Room appetite with just mainly being paper-based "puzzles" while entering 4 random plastic keys into a console hoping to hear the uplifting chime indicating that I've entered the correct sequence. At one point I found myself just mashing every single possible combination and not caring about the consequences. Knowing this wasn't working for me, I figured the Escape Room games by ThinkFun and Kosmos weren't going to offer a different experience from what I've already bought.
So where does The Werewolf Experiment differ to earn it 5 stars? The creativity and effort that was put into this game. The Werewolf Experiment began as a Kickstarter offer and was going to be on a very limited release to Backers only. It became so popular after it was backed by over two THOUSAND people, earning the creators Juliana and Ariel over a hundred THOUSAND dollars, that Mattel games picked up an offer to mass distribute it!
While the pictures on the Kickstarter page are a bit different from what the actual product offers in terms of quality of the game components, ie Plastic locks rather than metal locks, this can easily be ignored simply by the fun factor of the game itself! There were still quite a few paper-based elements, but it still came with more than enough physical items that were all part of the game to make you wonder "Hmm. How do these 2 things come together to get me a code??" Every piece included in the game had a purpose, there were no red herrings to throw you off, and it came with a Hint booklet for clues or an Answer booklet if all hope was lost, each booklet having a Table of Contents so you knew exactly what page to turn to. This is way easier to access rather than having to go onto the product website, enter a passphrase that dealt with the scenario, download the PDF Walkthrough, and read it down hoping you don't come across any answers you weren't supposed to read yet.
While the box says 2-8 players, I played in a group of 4 and would highly recommend you at least do the same. We "escaped" with 13 seconds on the clock.
On the original Kickstarter page, one of the pledge goal rewards was the announcement of Escape Room In A Box: The Magician's Spellbook. While there hasn't been an official announcement yet, I cannot wait for the release of the next game! Thank you!!!
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