We dive into 3 Deckscape games
Over the years we’ve reviewed a bunch of escape room type games from multiple publishers (4 different publishers to be exact).
Well, today we’re reviewing another set of escape room games from another publisher!
The Deckscape series of escape room card games is published by dV Giochi in Italy.
(It’s also the same company that publishes one of our favorite games that was also one of the first games we did a video review of — BANG!)
The Deckscape games are cooperative, story-driven games where players work together to solve a mystery or get out of a tough situation. As the name implies, the game is a deck of cards that players work through.
We’ve recently played through 3 of the Deckscape games and are ready to tell you what we think.
How to play Deckscape games
This may be the shortest “how to” section of any game review we’ve done. Are you ready?
Open the box. Read the first card. Do what it says. Solve the puzzles that ensue.
That’s it!
Can the whole family enjoy Deckscape games?
The recommended player age on the Deckscape games is 12+. But since it’s a cooperative game, players younger than that may join in if they’d like.
However, the puzzles in the games are often quite challenging and we can see younger kids having a very hard time figuring them out. We’ve played mostly with adults and everyone has found the games challenging.
The first game we played was Deckscape: the Fate of London. The story in this game is about a threat hanging over London. The Crown of England needs your help. Your mission is to find four devices hidden in secret locations and defuse them before midnight.
In Deckscape: The Mystery of Eldorado, you’re a group of explorers who tried to find the legendary golden city in the heart of the forest but were unsuccessful. While flying home your airplane is suddenly struck down and you find yourselves lost in the jungle. Can you survive the pitfalls of the Amazon and unravel the mystery?
The last game we played was Deckscape: The Curse of the Sphinx. During a visit to the ancient Egyptian monuments, an unforeseeable event locks the you in a secret room inside the pyramid. You’ll have to decipher the hieroglyphics and find a way out before the mummy catches you.
In regards to kids playing the games with you, the good news is that there isn’t anything gruesome in any of the games. Even in the Curse of the Sphinx, the content is appropriate for all ages. (We’ve included a photo of the mummy chasing you so you can see the extent of the artwork.)
Of the 3 games, our favorite was the Mystery of Eldorado.
There were times in all 3 games where we were left scratching our heads on how to solve various puzzles. If you can’t solve a puzzle correctly you get a penalty. The penalties are each themed to the game. For example, in the Curse of the Sphinx when you get something wrong, a mummy gets closer to catching you.
And we found ourselves taking penalties in every game.
The game includes a card with hints that players can reference without a penalty — which is nice. That way you can choose how difficult you want to make it for yourselves (to look at hints or not). But we also found that some hints weren’t enough help for us to figure out what to do next.
With both the Fate of London and Curse of the Sphinx there were a couple challenges that even after we discovered the correct answer, we don’t know how we would have figured it out correctly.
And that’s why we like the Mystery of Eldorado the most. The puzzles in Eldorado were challenges that we could reason out better or solve by being very observant throughout the game. In fact, like in typical mystery books, in each game players need to pay close attention to details as they go to do well.
The Deckscape games are also games that can be played solo.
But we prefer to go into it as a group because players’ minds think differently. And since the games combine a variety of puzzle types, having minds that look at things from different angles is very helpful.
Another thing we like about the Deckscape games is that there are points in each game where you separate a series of cards into groups. And those groups of cards can be worked through simultaneously by different groups of players.
For example, I played the Curse of the Sphinx with co-workers on a lunch break and we were able to break into smaller groups of 2 or 3 players to work on a puzzle while the other groups were busy figuring out different puzzles. Then we’d all come back together with our solutions (or shift them around and work on the other puzzles when we couldn’t figure them out with the original sub groups).
How do the Deckscape games score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?
Since the Deckscape games are ‘one-and-done’ escape room games, the obvious answer to this question is that they don’t score high on our “let’s play again” game meter.
It’s not that anything gets destroyed in the game. But rather, once you know the solution to the puzzles, there’s nothing compelling about going through that same game again.
However, since the cards are all clearly numbered, we simply resort the cards into their proper order and pass the game on to friends.
We’d like to thank dV Giochi for review copies of these 3 Deckscape games.
