Thames & Kosmos - "Exit The Game: Advent Calendar - The Hunt for the Golden Book"

Photo above is property of Thames & Kosmos

Company: Thames & Kosmos

Game: Exit The Game: Advent Calendar - The Hunt for the Golden Book

Country: USA 🇺🇸

Language: English

Type of Game: Tabletop Games 📬

Genre: Mystery, Adventure

Date Played: November 12, 2022

Difficulty (based on 3 players): 5/10

Size of Team: 1-4 Players (Ages 10+)

Time: Approximately 5-15 Mins/ per day

Price: $49.95

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After walking through a crazy snowstorm and entering your front door, you find a message on the table. Santa Claus’ golden book has gone missing, which contains everyone’s Christmas wishes. He needs your help to find it before Christmas Eve or else no presents will be delivered anywhere in the world. Santa was able to track the thief down to a remote mountain village. Sending some special transportation, you are swept away for a magical adventure to save Christmas.

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This is a fairly large box (but what do you expect for an advent calendar of puzzles) with beautiful illustrations of a small winter village and more on all sides. The box flips open, revealing 24 doors marked with Exit’s signature symbols. Also with the package is the story book, the hint book and the decoding table.

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Reading through the instruction booklet and looking at how the box is set up, you will notice a lot of gameplay similarities to other Exit games. Things like the looking for 3 number codes in the puzzles, using a decoder to see if you are correct or and everything you need is contained in the game.

Each day, we had to read a page from the story booklet and open the corresponding door. Inside the door was a tiny, detailed room that may or may not have contents to take out and investigate. From there we had to solve the puzzle to discover the code to the next room. A tip would be to have a flashlight on hand. Sometimes there are details in the room that were difficult to see with just how small the box is.

The story was creative in that each room had a fun new theme to it each day with some places and people you might recognize. This was a well thought out game, especially when it comes to the hint system and the decoder. The hints are printed in a booklet but upside down on the back page. That way when flipping the page, we could read one hint at a time. Once we solved the puzzle, there was also a two-part check on the decoder to ensure we opened the right door which was fantastically done.

Photos above are property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

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There were some great Christmas themed puzzles here with some outside the box thinking (literally and figuratively). If you are familiar with Exit games, you know you will have to look everywhere to solve the puzzles and this game was no different. We enjoyed all the puzzles. For a box of 24 puzzles, each was different enough to keep us guessing and engaged. Some we were able to get quite quickly using minimal items and some had us follow a trail over multiple items to get to the answer. We did play this in a couple of sitting but each puzzle was modest enough that it would be perfect with a cup of coffee every December morning.

Photos above are property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

🅲🅻🅾🆂🅸🅽🅶 🆃🅷🅾🆄🅶🅷🆃🆂

"The Hunt for The Golden Book" took us on quite the journey with its daily storytelling and lovely artwork. The story was fun but not too serious and detailed that we felt like we were forgetting things from previous days. The creativity of all the puzzles were brilliant, especially coming up with 24 different puzzles working off the space available to them. One of the other things we loved about this game was the special guest cameos from so many Christmas related characters and stories. There were even some for sure we missed. For any Christmas lovers out there, this got us in the mood for the holidays and found this is a perfect game to enjoy either on your own or with casual players who just need a small puzzle hit daily. This game would turn any puzzling scrooge around and excite them for Christmas.

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Check out our interview with the creators to understand more on the development side of the game:

Video above is property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

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(If you do decide to try this game, give us a shoutout or tag us on social media so we know you heard it from "ESCAPETHEROOMers"!)

Disclosure: We thank Thames & Kosmos for providing us with samples of the game. Although a complimentary experience was generously provided, it does not impact our opinion on the review whatsoever.

#MatthewLui #AtHomeGames #TabletopGames #PuzzlesByMail #OneOffs #AdventCalendar #Adventure #Mystery #ThamesandKosmos #USA #ExitTheGame