Play-at-home games by Ultimate Quest
Most recent ratings & reviews from players
It was fun. It didn’t seem like it needed a GM, but they were kind of the saving grace.
Played the updated version of the Pyramid and the puzzles haven't gotten any easier, but more team interaction is now allowed. Great hosting and lots of fast pace puzzling to keep the adrenaline levels high. Great fun.
Journal 29 was one of the first widely-known escape room books, and established several conventions that have been widely copied since - its double-page answer/key format, enigmatic style of puzzle, and use of a website to validate solutions have been adopted by all of the Trip1907/Trip1908/Codex Enigmatum/Escapages books, for example.
"Paper Labyrinth" offers somewhat of a refreshing change by deviating from this approach in several respects:
- Firstly, the vast majority of puzzles in the book occupy only a single-side, meaning that there is twice as much puzzle content in the book as in many other titles (where the left-hand side is usually a QR code linking to the answer verification)
- Hints and solutions for all the puzzles are contained within the book itself - there is no internet connection required to validate an answer or receive a key, which makes it much more useful as, well, a book, that can be taken on holiday, on the beach, or when travelling.
- There is a meta puzzle requiring various individual puzzles to be combined
These are all changes which I think make for a much better offering than some of its competitors. Unfortunately, the puzzles themselves - the core reason for anyone buying the book - are not great. Firstly, they are incredibly easy - I don't think I encountered any more than a couple that I couldn't immediately see the solution to. And although there is variety, there's nothing novel here - the puzzles are mostly riddles, anagrams, some trivial ciphers and wordplay. While there's nothing actually *wrong* with them, It's the kind of thing I might expect to find in a kids' book, and there's nothing here to challenge or surprise any keen puzzlers. Which is a shame, because in other respects, this book did a lot of things right - so maybe if you just want something to relax for an hour or so (although, in all honesty, I'd just recommend you download a puzzle set from the Puzzled Pint archive).