With Spring in the air and the many shutdowns of the last couple of pandemic years coming to an end, so many of us are looking for an escape. Although we may have settled into new routines, there’s often still an urge to break free.

And our review today is all about setting things free from their confined boxes.

In particular, these are “escape room” style puzzle boxes from EscapeWelt in Germany. Taking a look at their website, you’ll see they have a nice assortment to choose from.

The two we dove into are House of the Dragon and Space Box.

 

House of the Dragon

First impressions carry a lot of weight. And our first impression of House of the Dragon was that it was very impressive indeed.

The quality of both craftsmanship and presentation is fantastic!

After taking the puzzle box out of its packing box, we just wanted to admire it for a while. In fact, it could make a nice looking decoration even if we didn’t want to try to solve it.

Moving it around, we could hear things inside of the structure. The challenge is all about finding how to get to what’s inside.

Knowing that was our purpose, we set about carefully examining all the writings and symbols on the exterior walls. We also started fiddling with any part we could get to move in some way. For example, a gear poking out one of the walls could be rotated and we could see flowers and letters through some “windows” as we rotated it.

We also noticed a panel on the bottom that would obviously slide off. However, since it was being blocked from doing so, we knew we’d have to figure how to release what was blocking it.

And that’s where the head-scratching began.

Eventually we were able to remove a knob. That revealed another piece that in turn could be used to release the next element and so on.

If you get completely stumped, EscapeWelt has provided hints to guide you and videos that show step by step solutions.

Overall, we found that our first impressions held firm. House of the Dragon is a very high quality puzzle box from the workmanship down to the puzzles themselves. And we found it a tough challenge too.

 

Space Box

In a similar manner, we found another fun challenge in trying to get inside the Space Box. While still a considerable challenge, the Space Box was easier for us to solve than the House of the Dragon.

Perhaps it’s because we had previous experience with the prior box. Or it’s because the symbol and number challenges aligned more with my problem solving.

Sometimes, even when we got the right answer, we had to wiggle to components a bit more to get them to move and/or pull out. After all, to make sure the puzzle stays together, the pieces can be in place a bit tight. But overall, you don’t have to “force” anything.

It’s also pretty cool how some of the things you release will be used as subsequent elements to insert into different areas. One of the reasons it takes a while to solves these puzzles is because of how many different things you may attempt – like inserting, pushing, pulling and such.

Another thing to note about both of these puzzle boxes is how much of a cool tactile experience they are.

One of the things we love about physical board games are the tactile nature of doing things with our hands (be it cards, dice, tokens, player pieces, etc.). And these puzzle boxes are all about exploring with your hands. They just feel nice to fiddle with.

 

Final Thoughts and Discount Code

As you can tell, we’re very impressed with the engineering put into these escape puzzle boxes. There are so many bits and pieces that go into constructing these, that we’re amazed at the outcome.

If you’d like to buy some of the EscapeWelt puzzles, you can do so with a 10% discount on their website by entering the discount code “Theboardgamefamily” at checkout.

We’d like to thank EscapeWelt for review copies of the puzzle boxes.