We thought it was time to try another Unlock! Escape room in a box. Previously we had played Unlock!: The Island of Doctor Goorse as a group of six, then Unlock! 4 Exotic Adventures as a group of two.
This time we chose Unlock 2! – Mystery Adventures, which again featured three games of varying difficulty. The idea is to start with the easy game, move on to the medium one and finish with the hard one. All of them are co-operative escape room style games, played with a deck of cards and an internet app. You must have the app downloaded on your phone to play the game. Each game is supposed to last around an hour, with a mix of simple and challenging puzzles. The contents of the games are not destroyed so all three decks/games are replayable.
Unlock 2! – Mystery Adventures : The Nautilus’ Traps, The House on the Hill and The Tonipal’s Treasure
To play the games you need to combine different coloured cards. So you may find a key as a blue puzzle piece card and have to add it to a red puzzle piece card to open a cabinet. There are also green cards (Machines) and yellow cards (codes). It sounds more complicated than it is, believe me. the main difficulty is not combining the cards but finding any hidden numbers on them. Often these are so small they are hard to spot.
On the plus side, this escape room in a box includes 3 games – The Nautilus’ Traps, The House on the Hill and The Tonipal’s Treasure. Also, the decks of cards is entirely replayable should you feel so inclined.
On the minus side having to use an app to play is annoying. Also the games are timed by the app and involve a lot of arbitrary penalties. As noted above some of the clues are so small it is more like having a sight test than solving a puzzle.
Overall playing all three games proved too much hard work to be fun. We only managed to complete the first two and abandoned playing the third game.
The Nautilus’ Traps
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.
There is a twist with this game – you don’t have enough oxygen to complete the game and must solve puzzles in time to get more oxygen and thus top up the timer.
This is the “easy” game and was quite fun to play. We completed it in just over an hour, although that did include time taken to Google the walk-through as there were clues missing!
The House on the Hill
At the beginning of The House on the Hill, strange, paranormal activities have surrounded an abandoned house for the past three days. When an investigation uncovers that these occult occurrences centre on an excerpt read from The Book of the Dead, you and your companions are tasked to enter the house, find the book, and stop the curse…
A harder game, but it flowed better than other Unlock Games. We even managed to complete the game in 48 minutes.
However, we suffered a number of penalties on this game which reduced the fun. Also one hidden number was unseeable – even one we had the answer we couldn’t see it!
The Tonipal’s Treasure
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 will 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…..
Other reviewers have said that this adventure “made no sense whatsoever even with the cheat we still would never have come to the same ideas” and “is the most app orientated Unlock! experience” and suggested the ending is anticlimactic. So we decided not to play it at all.
Unlock 2 Mystery Adventures is available from Amazon
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