EXIT: The Abandoned Cabin

These EXIT games are excellent. The graphics, the stories, the difficulty levels are always accurate in my opinion. Things the 1st ever one I did and I'm hooked! I'm going to hopefully complete them all!

This was the first game in the series that we have played and we didn't have a great start! The game comes with a series of card decks (for riddles, answers and hints) and diary type guidebook that pictures the scene and provides visual reference material to solve the riddles. What we didn't realise was that the first two pages of the diary were stuck together (intentionally) and we therefore missed the opening dialogue! After 10 minutes of "what are we supposed to do here?" we realised our error - top tip; take time to set the game up and check the components carefully!

After that, everything was mostly great fun.

The rules are simple enough and the basic game mechanic is to look a picture or pictures portraying the in game location, and then resolve the presented clues or riddles to open up an in game container, which leads to another clue or riddle. The answer to most riddles comes in the form of a three number code, which when entered into the provided code wheel (think of it as an old telephone dial but with three discs of numbers from 0-9) gives you the number of the answer card which should (hopefully) confirm your correct answer and open up the next clue. Some of the clues are very clever and hidden in parts of the game that you wouldn't expect (no spoilers here) and some are frustrating; however, you get a series of hint cards, the last of which is the full solution, for each riddle so ultimately, not knowing the answer will not prevent you from completing the game. There were a few frustrations when we couldn't get an answer and on the one occasion that we checked the hint card, we found that we didn't have all of the clues that we needed to solve the riddle anyway.

This particular mystery is basically a trapped in a house in the woods scenario. The artwork and presentation is well done and adds ambience to the game. We completed the game with 4 players in a leisurely 3 hours. We were impressed at how the game used all of the resources in the box to hide clues and answers and a couple of the solutions were especially clever in their construction. I'd suggest that 4 is the maximum number of players, given the size of the printed material; its a small game and some of the pictures are smaller than would be ideal. At times, you feel like you want to get the magnifying glass out! Whilst the game is designed as a "one play" item, due to the need to cut/fold/write on certain cards, with some care and preferably a scanner/photocopier, it can be played more than once. This means that once you have escaped the room, you can pass it onto your mates! Since playing, we've purchased several others in the series and look forward to some more quality family gaming time during lockdown!

Great exit game. Some really good riddles and very logical.