Kalinasu Adventure review

Let's go on an adventure!

Table of Contents

Location: Home

Date Played: May 2024

Team size: 1; recommended 1 - 3 players

Duration: 4 hours

Price: ~S$68 on their website

Premise

 This time you will have to bring out the adventurer in you and travel all over the world testing your skills of exploration, research and search for enigmas. A coin from a legendary treasure has just appeared, proving that it is not a myth and only you can find it.

 

There were a lot of temples dedicated to worship the sun, but there was a special one from the Kalinasu civilization that worshiped the moon and housed a treasure full of coins made with a special metal that fell from the sky during the full moon. This is known as "The Treasure of Moon Gold", and a single piece of it would be worth millions.

Components

The game comes with 4 envelopes each consisting of 1 chapter and takes ~1 hour to complete each of them. Most of them generally contain your document-based components but every now and then you'll get something nifty like a cork or some gems.

Generally, the components are good enough to serve its purposes. While I appreciate the occasional trinkets, they feel more like a gimmick to me than anything.

Gameplay

In this game, you'll be assisting "someone" with their journey to finding the kalinasu coin. You'll be interacting with them via a chatbot on their website and you'll be solving puzzles on the website with his help. Sometimes, you'll be required to visit other websites to solve a puzzle but all of them will be under the company who created the game, Key Enigma.

The puzzles are quite varied, ranging from logic puzzles to lateral thinking but there definitely is some busywork. If you ever get stuck, you can ask the bot for hints and solutions to any puzzle.

Puzzles/Thoughts

➕Puzzles were good enough. Funnily enough, the puzzles were a step up from their newer games like Circus of Mhodryak. While some of them were definitely frustrating and some had too much busywork, a good handful were enjoyable to solve.

➖Story was ok. While it isn't the most engaging story, it was something and the puzzles were mostly thematic to it.

➖No mindblowing moments. While it could've been due to me being exposed to more puzzles, the puzzles didn't feel particularly fantastic or unique to me.

✖️ Contents were rather sparse. I would've appreciated more puzzles, each chapter took me ~45-50 minutes and they could've fit in 1 or 2 more puzzles.

Verdict

Overall, Kalinasu is a bit above average in escape room games. It had decent puzzles and the use of multi media technology is pretty impressive but it falters in its middling storytelling and the occasional frustrating moments.

Rating: 3/5

★★★✩✩

You can buy their game here