Unlock! Adventure Series game reviews

What does a submarine, train, buried treasure, hieroglyphics, mouse, and the emerald city have in common?

They’re all things you’ll discover playing Unlock! Escape Adventure games!

Escape rooms have popped up all around the world over the last few years. And following their popularity, escape room-themed board games have cropped up by the loads as well.

We first reviewed one such game two years ago, and then reviewed another last year. Well, today you’re in for a real treat because we’re reviewing 6 such games!

Today we’re happy to share 6 games from Asmodee / Space Cowboys in the Unlock! series of games. They’re essentially an escape room in a deck of cards.

While the basics of how the games works may be the same, the elements and puzzles to solve within the games are completely unique. And they’re all loads of fun!

 

How to play Unlock! games

Unlock! is a series of “escape-room” type games that are completely card driven. All cards in the deck but one are face down and players shouldn’t look at any of the cards before beginning.

Simply read the first card and do what it says.

It will set the stage for what’s happening and then instruct you to flip it over.

As soon as you do, you’ll see a scene before you with elements to inspect. Any numbers you see on the scene are cards you find in the deck and turn over. Those cards in turn will present you with different parts of the story, objects, or parts of a puzzle to be solved. From there every game follows its own path.

Within the game there are 5 basic colors of cards.

The red and blue cards are ones with puzzle piece icons that must be combined in some manner to arrive at a numeric solution. Once players think they have the right number, they find that card in the deck and flip it over. If they’re wrong, they’ll get a penalty. If they’re right, they’ll know it by when they find on the card and how the game progresses.

Green cards are machines that must be manipulated in some way.

Since the Unlock! games don’t involve destroying any cards, there isn’t really a way to manipulate a machine on a card. Instead, players turn to the Unlock! app to fiddle with the machine.

That’s right – all Unlock! games can only be played with the associated free Unlock! app on your favorite digital device!

The free Unlock! companion app runs the timer while also providing clues, offering hints, and confirming successes. And in the case of machines, that’s where the players will solve the machine puzzle. And every Unlock! game we’ve played has very different types of machine puzzles.

Yellow cards are codes. Once again, correct codes must be entered in the app to progress in the adventure. The catch is that codes can be found in a large variety of ways. So players will have to use their wits to figure them out.

Grey cards are everything else that provides information to the players throughout each game.

Unlock! games come in 3 different difficulty levels and typically have a 60 minute time limit. Players try to complete the game within the 60 minutes but if they can’t do it that quickly, they’re aren’t stopped. They can continue playing the game and a timer will keep track of how long they continue playing – which will play into their final score.

Players can also use the app to request hints on cards as well as track the penalties they run into during the game.

It’s quite the slick system that we’ve really enjoyed playing.

So with that basic intro of Unlock! games, it’s time to share our thoughts on 6 of the games. (The last 3 will be available starting next week – so enjoy this sneak peak (spoiler-free)).

• Unlock! The Tonipal’s Treasure
• Unlock! The Nautilus’ Traps
• Unlock! The Island of Doctor Goorse
• Unlock! A Noside Story
• Unlock! Tombstone Express
• Unlock! The Adventures of Oz

 

Unlock! The Tonipal’s Treasure

(Difficulty Level 3)

The Tonipal’s Treasure sets you at the start of a hunt for the treasure of Captain Smith, hidden somewhere on Tonipal Island. As your adventure begins, you’ve been arrested by the Governor and thrown into prison — you’ll need to escape quickly, especially since Johnson, a famous treasure hunter, is also on his way to Tonipal in search of the very treasure that you seek. 

Since it’s a pirate-themed game, it has a lot of the things you’d expect to find – swords, secret maps, skeletons, swashbuckling fights, secret codes, and buried treasure. Oh, and let’s not forget the voodoo doll. (Good luck with figuring out how to use it…)

As you might expect with a level 3 adventure, Tonipal’s Treasure was a difficult adventure for us to get through. We played it early in our Unlock! game run and missed a few things that we think we might have noticed if we’d played some of the other games first.

We ran into a number of penalties and went over time quite a bit. But even still, we had a great time with the swashbuckling theme and puzzles.

 

Unlock! The Nautilus Traps

(Difficulty Level 2)

The Nautilus’ Traps brings you to the bottom of the sea. When a sea monster attacks your submarine at the outset of the adventure, it’s up to you to make your way through the depths and back to the surface if you’re going to escape…before your oxygen runs out.

Speaking of which, we like the tie-in to oxygen running out in this game. Because as you’ll most likely discover, you can find a little extra oxygen to extend your time underwater. The soundtrack through the app in this game is perfect for the theme.

It’s hard for us to see this as a difficulty level 2 since we were left scratching our heads a bunch. And in the end we ran out of oxygen before we could escape. Just when we thought we were getting close, we faced another unexpected challenge.

 

Unlock! The Island of Doctor Goorse

(Difficulty Level 3)

In The Island of Doctor Goorse, you and your team have crash-landed on the island of an eccentric antiques collector. Two to six players will be split into teams, separated in the crash, and forced to escape from two separate starting points. The twists and turns of this challenging adventure will test even the most talented escape artists. With your lines of communication cut, can you and your teammates find a way off the island?

Right off the bat, this game splits players into two teams. Since each team has landed on a different part of the island, each team gets their own deck of cards. They can’t look at each other’s cards or communicate…until they solve a way in the game to do so.

It’s the only game in the series that lists 2-6 players instead of 1-6 players on the box.

Both teams share the same digital device to fiddle with machines or codes in their area (or to get hints about certain cards).

One of the cool things we liked about this game was how things built upon each other. In particular there’s one chain of puzzles/cards that string players from one element to the next in a nice fashion.

We enjoyed most of the challenges in this game except for one. And it was a big one that even after we got the hints and the solution, didn’t understand how we would have ever got to that solution.

It definitely warrants the level 3 mantle.

 

Now on to the brand new games as of the first week of June 2018!

These three we played in order of difficulty and are glad that we did.

 

Unlock! A Noside Story

(Difficulty Level 1)

This is a great starter game for families diving into playing Unlock! games. Well, maybe it’s not a perfect place to start because the theme of this game is kind of like a sequel to an earlier Unlock! game – Squeek and Sausage (my first introduction to Unlock! games at SaltCon earlier this year).

It’s not really a sequel and can be played easily without having played Squeek and Sausage. It’s just that the main character, Noside, is a returning character. The storyline is perfectly fine to stand on its own.

While some of the starting puzzles in this game were super simple, they were a great warm-up for other challenges to come.

As an example of some of the game play, check out this early combination of red and blue cards – where even young kids will think to combine the stick with the dog.

If you’ve got young kids in the family wanting to try out an escape game, this is a great one for them!

 

Unlock! Tombstone Express

(Difficulty Level 2)

The train you’re escorting through the Wild West contains some precious cargo. It’s up to you to survive the adventure and escort it home safely.

As soon as we opened the box for this game, we knew we’d be experiencing something fresh and new. That’s because there were cardboard sheets to punch out bullets!

We didn’t have any idea how the bullets were going to figure into the game, but about mid-way through, it was extremely clear.

In many Unlock! games, the cards are slowly revealed as players solve one clue/puzzle at a time.

But in Tombstone Express, it seemed like we quickly had tons of cards on the table at the same time as we traversed the train, encountered many characters, and got clues from each. Yet even with a lot of cards out in a short amount of time, we knew there were some things missing that we couldn’t quite figure out.

That’s where one of the cool new elements of this game popped up, time-triggerd events within the app itself. Since players are riding on a moving train with a fixed destination and time of arrival, it makes sense that some things are very time dependent. Well, that’s figured into the app and certain things will trigger while you’re playing without you expecting it.

Let’s just say we all had smiles on our faces when such events came our way. Very cool addition.

We finished this one just under the time limit and came up with the right solution. So we figured we did a pretty good collective job of being the sheriff.

 

Unlock! The Adventures of Oz

(Difficulty Level 3)

I’ll cut right to the chase and disclose that The Adventures of Oz has been our favorite of all the Unlock! games we’ve played!

And it’s not because of the theme.

Sure it’s a fun family-themed game by visiting the land of Oz. And you get to play along with Dorothy, Toto, Tin Man, Scarecrow, and the Lion to seek out the Wicked Witch of the West and then get back home safely.

But the reason we love it the most is because of all the elements thrown in that were a blast to use and puzzles to solve. The variety was fantastic and the game added yet even more things that we didn’t expect.

Without giving away spoilers, not only is there a main quest, but there are also side quests.

There’s also a special mirror that players must discover how to use in various ways throughout the game.

We played this game with 5 players and it was a perfect amount. Every player had at least one moment in the game where they had the “aha” moment on different types of puzzles. So it was the perfect blend of ideas flowing among us.

Not only is it a level 3 game, but it also has a timer of 90-minutes. So we knew going in that it would be more involved.

In the end, we only used hints on 2 cards and finished (with all side quests) in 96 minutes!

There were plenty of high fives around the table!

 

How do Unlock! games score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?

Unlock! games overall score very high on our “let’s play again” meter. Meaning that we are totally on board with playing every Unlock! game we can get our hands on.

The only downside is that once you’ve played a game, you know the path to victory. So it’s not likely that we’ll have the same enjoyment playing the same game a second time. Sure we might forget the exact solutions to puzzles, but chances are that memories will trigger in our minds when we flip over certain cards.

That’s just the way it is with escape room games. They’re meant to be lived in the moment and the experience fully enjoyed then and there. The good news is that for less than $15, you can have a great hour+ engaging experience with your family.

Our suggestion is that you plan it out with your friends to each buy one of the games, play them with your families, then trade them around. Or better yet, buy all the games and give them out as gifts – with the caveat that they get traded around amongst everyone.

Either way you choose to do it, we highly recommend you buy some Unlock! games and have a great time playing them with your family and friends!

We’d like to thank Asmodee and Miniature Market for review copies of Unlock! Adventure games.