Room-in-a-box, Apr 2021
Having been rebels and independent smugglers in the first two games, this third one puts you on the side of the bad guys, as an undercover Imperial agent tracking down a crate of valuable minerals. This includes the unusual feature of needing to periodically report back to your headquarters. In practice this simply means sometimes being prompted to enter something into the app and be instructed to take a card or two; but it provides an extra feeling of story progression.
As with most Unlock boxes, the third game is the trickiest; though since the Star Wars set is intended to be easier, that’s still rated as ‘medium’ instead of ‘difficult’. In this case that mainly comes from a more open-ended structure with less guidance about how to move forward. Much of the game is based around a terrain map that allows you to attempt to ‘travel’ to particular locations on it, and it would have been helpful if the game had given more indication of whether it expected you to explore it proactively or only attempt locations when something points you to them. (It’s mostly the former, but that’s hard to tell since there are several locations that do inflict time penalties on you for trying them…)
If you can manage not to lose the thread of the gameplay (or recover it with the hints and/or solution booklet) then it has solid and fairly imaginative puzzles, and an effective on-theme story populated with a healthy cast of allies and enemies.