We were kindly contacted by Harry at Epic Escapes for the amazing opportunity to review the Epic Escapes Starter Pack, this massive package arrived on my doorstep on Monday afternoon, and we set to work setting up the room and giving it a good try on Tuesday evening.
But… What is it?
Epic Escapes is an escape room in a box that you can set up in your own home. The Starter Pack includes three different escape rooms, Hijack (easy) Piracy (Medium) and Crime (Hard).
The Starter pack contains EVERYTHING you need to set up an escape room in you own house, all you need is a suitable space. The pack consists of a very detailed instruction sheet for the “game host” and all the paper parts of the puzzles. This is the same for all 3 games.
What sets Epic Escapes apart from the other play at home games we have played, is that you’re provided with actual lockable boxes and padlocks (along with a couple of other things that I won’t spoil!) and therefore there is an added excitement for any enthusiast, and that is setting up the room itself, where all the padlocks have to be set to the correct codes and the puzzles aspects hidden in your room of choice!
This is a really interesting aspect, as there was only myself and Ian playing I did wonder if it would “Work” and whilst, yes I knew the codes… I didn’t spend any time reading the puzzle sheets so I didn’t know HOW to get to those codes, I could still “solve the puzzles” (I just left all the searching to Ian, which he wasn’t impressed with!)
The production values of the game are excellent, glossy prints, good quality locks and beautifully produced boxes (yes, that’s a thing!) It’s obvious that this is a luxury product. When opening there is a sense of grandeur in the packaging and its sleek yet sophisticated design is a good sign of what’s to come in the game in respect of its contents.
It’s hard to talk in-depth about theming with a pirate game set in my living room, but if you wanted to go all out (i.e if you were setting this up for a party, or special occasion) some piratey music and decorations would help set the scene! The game “pieces” were all nicely in theme and told a simple yet coherent story throughout.
One excellent aspect of Epic Escapes is that the games are non-destructible, so they can be played more than once (a great idea for sharing amongst a group of friends as the initial price point of £99 can seem a bit jaw-dropping at first!)
We chose the medium difficulty game of Piracy, once I’d set it up and got to work, we found the puzzles to be nice, and fairly logical, albeit a little bit on the easier side (again, that is incredibly subjective!) Of course there weren’t as many puzzles as you’d find in a brick and mortar room, but what there was, was good. We did encounter a slight niggle in that 2 of the codes were incredibly close to each other, and the way we solved 1 puzzle gave us the order for the wrong padlock! This wouldn’t have been a problem had the numbers not been so very similar. However, this didn’t affect the gameplay, as it was an open game, we could have solved either puzzle first! The puzzles were all nicely on theme and pleasing to solve.
We only played Piracy, but we really did enjoy it and are planning to set up Crime next, so I will update this review when we have played it!
As I mentioned above, the starter pack costs £99, on the face of it this seems quite expensive, and it is a lot of money to spend, however you are getting 3 separate games, and all the locks/gubbins to create those games. I feel that Epic Escapes is good value for money, and it is most definitely a luxury product in its design and execution.
With more expansion packs on the way later on in 2020, there are bound to be endless evenings of fun to be had with this product.
https://www.epic-escapes.games/
Price £99 (for 3 hour long games)
*disclaimer, Epic Escapes sent this to us free of charge to review, this, however, does not affect or influence our review in any way, all opinions are our own.*
Brit of an Escape Habit 