EXIT: The Catacombs of Horror

My friends and I play a lot of in-person escape rooms so I was a little skeptical of a board game version at first. However, this was the perfect level of challenging and we all thoroughly enjoyed it.
Such a budget-friendly way of playing an escape room in a group as well!
Would definitely recommend if you're someone who enjoys a challenge and a teamwork puzzle game. Will definitely be buying more of these in the future!

I've played about seven different Exit games at this point, and every single one has a puzzle that makes you go "wow, that's clever". Whether it's particularly clever wordplay or a phenomenal feat of cardboard engineering, there's a moment in every single one where, no matter how frustrated you get, you think "this was worth the price of the game". Catacombs of Horror has perhaps the most impressive "wow" puzzles in the whole series, and that's saying something!

It follows the usual Exit format (solving riddle cards that unlock more cards and cardboard bits to help you further the story and solve more puzzles), but has a space to take a break in the middle. In terms of the number and complexity of the puzzles, in my view you genuinely are getting the same amount of content as two full exit games in this box, which makes the price even more appealing.

The story is fairly dark and occult-focused in this one, which might not be for everyone, but we loved it. I think the age rating on the box was spot on given the content.

My only gripe, and this is the reason for the dropped star, is that some of the instructions about when you can unlock new items or puzzles were not as clear as usual - we spent about 30 mins on one puzzle, only to look at the hints and find we were allowed to use an item it hadn't made clear we'd unlocked. Usually the exit games do this very well, so we were quite surprised.

Difficulty wise, Exit games run the gauntlet a bit. We've solved a 4* difficulty swiftly as everything fell into place for our group, and taken 2 hours to solve a 2* difficulty when we got stuck on a couple of things (the hint system in exit is fantastic, but we try to not use them when we can). This box says 4.5*, and I think that's accurate. It was a real challenge, but that also meant real satisfaction when we finally got the solution. We only ended up using one hint card in total, so that shows that the puzzles are just on the right side of challenging.

A great addition to the series!

Fun and challenging for four adults

This is easily the most difficult title in the series we have played so far. Took us well over 3 hours to complete and we were truly baffled at times, there is the opportunity to stop about half way through if you are apprehensive about commiting to such a long game.
The theme is a little darker than many of the other games in the series but that won't be an issue for most age groups likely to play it.
This is probably best played with a group of 3-4 people so as to get some discussion and ideas flying, some of the riddles required a different point of view or style of thinking.
Highly recommended, but definitely play a few other titles first to familiarise yourself with the game style, this one is tricky.

Love these Exit games, they are entertaining and challenging while easy enough to engage my teenagers. Thirsty Meeples provides great customer service with swift delivery :-)