Room-in-a-box, Mar 2017
See the Escape Room The Game: Prison Break review for general comments about the Escape Room The Game bundle – this scenario is only available as part of the set.
Nuclear Countdown is a bomb defusal story, with the trail of clues explained away as hints left by the dastardly bomber. It takes a truly twisted mind to write something like: “I never expected you to get this far! But since you have, here’s another clue you’ll never be able to solve!”. I paraphrase, of course.
I hated the first section of this game. It’s so almost a good puzzle, with a set of clues designed to look like found items… but not only does it suffer from multiple painful ambiguities, there’s a nasty complication for which the most charitable interpretation is that it was caused by an error made while localising the content to a UK audience. There’s a separate major drawback for UK players in this game, which I’ll have to pass over so as to avoid spoilers but which put a significant hole in what would otherwise have been a highlight of the game.
If you’re willing to put up with all those problems, your patience is rewarded by a complex, challenging and very fair puzzle. Doing this under time pressure was a highlight of the series – or would have been had we not been left with bare seconds after spending far too long messing around with the first section. 