Category Archives: Room in a box

Unlock!: The Night of the Boogeymen

Room-in-a-box, Jun 2019

Unlock! are nothing if not experimental. I imagine it’s due to the variety of designers involved, typically a different designer for each game, but the way each game is distinctive not just in presentation but in gameplay is one of the series’s parti… (more)

Journal 29: Revelation

Room-in-a-box, Jun 2019

Naturally, the first thing I have to mention here is the terrible missed opportunity in not calling this book Journal 30. Leaving that aside, Revelation is of course the follow-up to Journal 29, a puzzle book that managed to spawn a small sub-genre o… (more)

Cryptogram Puzzle Post

Room-in-a-box, Apr 2019

Cryptogram Puzzle Post is a subscription puzzle product, definitely not marketed as a home escape game, but filling much the same niche as subscription-based home escape games. In its own words it is a “monthly illustrated storytelling experiment ins… (more)

Puzzle Card: Murder on the Line

Room-in-a-box, Mar 2019

Puzzle Card’s third card deviates a little from the first two: rather than the escape room puzzle style, it’s designed as a murder mystery. This means the card has quite a bit of story text to read and digest; and you then need to combine that with t… (more)

Puzzle Card: Crack The Safe

Room-in-a-box, Mar 2019

Puzzle Card is exactly what it sounds like: a birthday greetings decorated with a mini sequence of puzzles for the recipient to solve. Their first card, which I reviewed here, themed its puzzles with a simp… (more)

Enigma Emporium: Blowback

Room-in-a-box, Jan 2019

Blowback, Enigma Emporium’s second play-at-home puzzle game and a sequel to Wish You Were Here, is at time of writing about to launch on Kickstarter. It works perfectly well stand-alone, though I imagine most players will tackle it having first tried… (more)

Enigma Emporium: Wish You Were Here

Room-in-a-box, Jan 2019

The boom in physical escape rooms has brought with it an increasing range of play at home puzzle products in various formats. Enigma Emporium’s first such product, Wish You Were Here, is notable for the efficiency of its design: an envelope containin… (more)

James Hamer-Morton: Escape Room Puzzles

Room-in-a-box, Nov 2018

I have no idea how to rate this book. Its introduction states that it is “different to any puzzle book you’ve encountered”. Naturally, I dismissed that as marketing hyperbole, only to discover that it’s entirely true. The introduction also tells you … (more)

Purple Donkey: Escape Room The Game

Room-in-a-box, Nov 2018

Not to be confused with the similarly named line of home games from Spin Master Games, this product consists of a plastic padlock with four coloured dials, plus a set of sixteen different puzzles to solve. For the benefit of anyone who doesn’t read p… (more)

Rami Hansenne: Codex Enigmatum

Room-in-a-box, Nov 2018

Puzzle books and magazines have always had a loyal following, as shown by the puzzle sections in almost every newspaper and the various puzzle magazines seen in newsagents. The boom in escape rooms appears to have had a welcome spill-over effect in e… (more)