Gloomy vaults lie under the city of lights. The catacombs of Paris swallow the light, secrets, and — apparently — also people. After the mysterious disappearance of a friend in the catacombs, you embark on a mysterious search through the underground labyrinth. Will you be able to find your friend in time and escape this cavernous world full of dark mysteries?
The Catacombs of Horror is a 2-part game with one long narrative by Exit Games. The City Adventurers began playing this a year ago and only managed to complete part one. While the box suggests you can complete each half of the game in a maximum of eighty minutes, we took almost two hours for part one alone.
As it had taken us so long, we needed a break before attempting part two…….and getting the team back together to complete the mission has proved difficult. So much so that, by the time we remembered we had a second part to complete, we had completely forgotten what happened in part one!
Therefore this review is only based on part one as the City Adventurers only completed half this mission.
The Catacombs of Horror is described as a very difficult two part escape room in a box, with each part being its own challenge. The game includes an instruction booklet, a decoder disc plus twenty-eight riddle cards, forty-eight answer cards and forty-two help cards. There are also a number of “strange items”, a poster, a letter, a photograph, a “locked” box, a picture frame, a support stand, three small plastic skulls in red, white and blue and a tea-light candle.
We have played EXIT games before so assumed this would be a similar game, just longer and split into two parts.
We were wrong.
Not only was this game very difficult to solve, we found it frustrating rather than fun to complete some of the puzzles. And I say this with us using more help cards than was normal.
In fact, I think that is one of the reasons we took so long in deciding whether or not to play part 2. Having not enjoyed part 1, we decided to call it quits and not attempt part 2.
Like other titles in the Exit series of games, The Catacombs of Horror includes components that are meant to be folded, written on, cut or torn etc so they can only be used as a single-use game. A potential problem if you cannot remember what happened in part one and want to replay it before you start on part two!
The Catacombs of Horror is available from Amazon
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