Room-in-a-box, Apr 2021
The Exit series of puzzle games keeps rolling on; the games follow a well-defined format and style, and at this point are definitely starting to blur one into another. On the other hand, it’s a format and style that works well and reliably delivers a decent evening’s puzzle game, albeit one that we find significantly less challenging these days now that we’re familiar with the types of puzzles and tricks that the designers like to use.
You’re searching for a legendary artefact hidden in the tomb of a long-dead knight – or something of that sort. The Exit games put a little more emphasis on the story these days but it’s still just window-dressing for the puzzles. As usual you have ten puzzles to solve, one after the other, each resolving to a three digit code; there’s a journal of clue information that’s available to pore through from the start, and a deck of clue cards that you get access to as you progress.
You’d think there’d be only so many puzzle ideas you could use to produce a three digit code, and some of the puzzles here are definitely reminiscent of ones used on other Exit games, but the designers really do manage to find ever new tricks and permutations. There’s one obvious highlight puzzle, and I suspect the whole game may have been built around that one idea – but it’s really pretty good. Other than that this is a solid and unremarkable addition to the series. I’d quibble with the choice of font for one of the puzzles, but the game had no serious flaws. It’s labelled as medium difficulty, though be warned it has plenty of the type of the expectation-breaking tricks that the Exit games specialise in, making it more approachable to those who’ve played some of their others than to players new to the series.