Solve puzzles to escape a haunted house, a submarine, and search for pirate gold.

Table of Contents

Location: Home

Date Played: Apr 2023

Team size: 1-4; we recommend 2

Duration: 1 hour / game; total 3 hours

Price: ~S$50 on Amazon

Premise

"Unlock! Mystery Adventures" is a cooperative card game inspired by escape rooms, offering three distinct adventures:

  1. Escape: Navigate through a haunted house and uncover its secrets.
  2. Mystery Mansion: Solve mysteries in a spooky mansion.
  3. The Island of Doctor Goorse: Search for pirate treasure on an island.

As with other Unlock! series, you'll use a deck of cards and the companion app (available for iOS and Android) to solve puzzles, unravel the stories, and ultimately escape or uncover the mysteries.

Components

Each case in the "Mystery Adventures" series includes approximately 60-66 cards, a tutorial deck, and an instruction manual. Unlike some other series, this one doesn't come with additional props like posters or leaflets.

Gameplay

Gameplay follows the familiar Unlock! formula: starting from an introductory card, players progress through the game by finding card numbers, solving puzzles, and using clues provided by the cards and app.

One unique aspect of the Mystery series is the ability to tackle puzzles simultaneously. This means that players can work on different puzzles independently, with the puzzles eventually leading to clues or hints for an overarching puzzle. While this can be beneficial for group play, it can also be overwhelming, leading to confusion about which cards belong together to solve a puzzle.

Puzzles

The simultaneous puzzle-solving approach has its downsides. My team found it frustrating to identify which cards should be grouped together to solve specific puzzles. This led to moments of confusion and reliance on the hint system.

Despite this challenge, we still enjoyed playing the cases and had fun overall. Some puzzles stumped us, adding to the excitement and sense of accomplishment when we finally cracked them.

Verdict

"Unlock! Mystery Adventures" is a decent addition to the Unlock! series, but it falls slightly below the standard set by other series. The major issue we encountered was the complexity of managing multiple simultaneous puzzles, which made it difficult to determine which cards were meant to be combined for solutions. Nevertheless, we had an enjoyable time with these cases.

Rating: 3/5

★★★✩✩

You can buy it on Amazon