Escape Quest Queenstown - "Missing Gold Escort"

Updated: Apr 24

Photo above is property of Escape Quest Queenstown

Company: Escape Quest Queenstown

Game: Missing Gold Escort

Country: New Zealand 🇳🇿

Language: English

Type of Game: DIY Escape Kits 🖨️✂

Genre: Adventure

Date Played: March 18, 2021

Difficulty (based on 4 players): 6.5/10

Size of Team: Unlimited

Time: Unlimited (Suggested 1.5-2 hours)

Price: $30 NZD/ Team (Approx. $21)

🆃🅷🅴 🆂🆃🅾🆁🆈

It is the 1860s. There's a Gold Rush happening in Queenstown, NZ. A gold escort driver has gone missing. Is he lost or did the bandits get him? You need to find him and return the Gold back to the bank! Time is ticking...

🆃🅷🅴 🅶🅰🅼🅴 🅿🅻🅰🆈

This is a print-n-cut game paired with an online interface. You'll start the game by preparing all the items that you'll need to print and cut first. You can do that as you play the game but it'll make the play time much longer. Once you are done with the preparation, you can start the game on the designated website. There'll be an video intro of the backstory, a clear instruction on password input and information on how to navigate the online interface. It was pretty easy to use and we really enjoyed the build-in hint system. If you want to play the hard mode, you won't know how many digits or letters the password would require. If you merely needed that bit, there's a separate tab to allow you to only look at that information. If you need further assistance, there's nudging hints available on a separate tab.

The interface also informs you clearly on which pages you'll need for a certain puzzle. We think this is quite important in print-n-cut games as you'll be overwhelmed by the amount of clues especially with all the cut outs.

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The puzzles were very creative for a print-n-cut game. There were times when we were making 3D models, visualizing things from different perspectives, strategizing escape routes and more! It had just the right amount of mixture of easy and hard puzzles. We would fly through a few and be stumped on one. I would definitely recommend using hints as some puzzles were quite difficult and without hints we were unable to proceed forward.

My favorite puzzles were the tactile ones where you could physically utilize the papers to form various shapes or images that you wouldn't normally detect. Once everything was in its right place, that's when the magic revealed itself. This is hard to do on paper but Escape Quest Queenstown did give us a few good "reveals" throughout the game.

🅲🅻🅾🆂🅸🅽🅶 🆃🅷🅾🆄🅶🅷🆃🆂

I love when history is recreated with games. In this game, you get a glimpse of what life was like back in the 1860s through puzzles rather than a boring history book. You can tell Escape Quest Queenstown put a lot of work into making this happen. If you get a chance to visit them in Queenstown, you can play their in-person escape room "Gold Heist in the Gold Rush", which is the same theme this game was based on! We hope we get to return back to New Zealand in the near future. It's such a beautiful country!

𝔼𝕊ℂ𝔸ℙ𝔼𝕋ℍ𝔼ℝ𝕆𝕆𝕄𝕖𝕣𝕤❜ ℙ.𝕀.𝕤❜ 𝕋𝕙𝕠𝕦𝕘𝕙𝕥𝕤

Helen B.

I have now tried a few different types of online escape game with ESCAPETHEROOMers, but not yet a print-and-play one, so I was excited to try something new.

We had to print about 12 pages of A4 and hubby and I spent a happy 10 minutes cutting out the elements in advance. The graphics were good quality and looked interesting and varied.

We began our adventure with a recorded video that contained a clue so listen carefully :) Answers are entered into a website and confirmed by submission, if you're incorrect it tells you and if correct you get to move on. We then solved a relatively easy picture puzzle - I think the game warms you up nicely into puzzle-solving mode.

The next puzzle involved some of our cutouts, and this one had us scratching our heads for a while. What we had missed was the "Fold instructions" which were in plain sight on the page, and whilst we had guessed how to put it together already, the instructions did confirm something else which helped us. However despite it being a funky papercraft - the answer eluded us and we had to go through the hints which didn't give us much we didn't know, but finally gave us the nudge we needed to solve it, after a long time wondering! I do feel this one could have been designed to be a little clearer.

The play flows nicely, with little bits of story woven in to give context, and the next puzzle - again after reading the fold instructions, was really neat and probably one of the best in the pack. The remaining puzzles were solved, some quickly, some with a bit more head-scratching, but all in all they provided a good level of difficulty and variety.

I found that all having your own printed materials and just one person entering codes/answers on a website while we all watched worked really well and fast became my favourite type because you have something other than just clicking around a screen to do, whilst all solving simultaneously. There was much group collaboration and chat on what to do with the various paper parts as well as the puzzles, which was also more relaxed than games with a time-limit.

We emerged victorious after a challenging but enjoyable 2 hours! I am keen to try more printable escape games now! loved the theme of old-world gold rush and when we get to New Zealand in future I hope we can get to visit the company's real rooms!

Mike S.

This game is created and takes place in New Zealand. That should be a main idea when solving the puzzles in this set. One does not need to have been to New Zealand but it does help to be familiar with the countries and the phrases. This caught the US people off guard and while we were able to figure it out, there was luckily another person on our team from the UK who could help us out with some of the phrasing they use. With that said, the puzzles in this set are hard. Having four people on our team, it took us around two hours to complete. There were some logic leaps that, after getting clues from the accompanying site, the team was able to solve. A minor gripe that I had was that the solution the puzzle was looking for was sometimes never stated. An example of this included puzzles looking for number digits then another that was looking for an actual word, and other solves looking for a string of letters and numbers of varying lengths. This made our inputs for the solutions seem more like a guess than an actual answer. (Update 3/31/21: The company has taken this feedback and added an attached insert into the “Number of Characters for Code” TAB to help narrow down the range of possibilities/difficulty level for each puzzle) The story of this game created a ponderous journey. There was plenty of background in this game about the history of New Zealand and it’s gold rush. All of that information though, was needed to fit into the wide variety of puzzles that encompassed this game. It was a long journey that the team was sent on and the way the game was set up felt like a point to point adventure, rather than a developing storyline based upon your solves in the game. The quality of the game and the product you get is a great representation that should be expected in a print n play game. All of the pages that were printed out came out in clear images and there wasn't much of an issue discerning the information on the page. Please note, there is a good amount of cutting pieces out of the packet in this game, you can cut them before you start the game which I would recommend. Overall, it was a mixed bag that leaned on the harder side of puzzle games that I have played. I will give the designer credit, some of the actions needed to solve puzzles are unique and quite inventive. There is no penalty for using clues and hints and it would be beneficial for the group to do so if they get stuck during the game. If your group is looking for a challenging evening of solving a variety of puzzles (both physical and mental) check this game out and see if it’s the right game for you.

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(If you do decide to try this game, please remember to let them know that you heard it from"ESCAPETHEROOMers"!)

Disclosure: We thank Escape Quest Queenstown for providing us with a sample of the game. Although complimentary experience was generously provided, it does not impact our opinion on the review whatsoever.