Players: 2-5
Age: 10+
Duration: +- 60 minutes per scenario
Distributor: Identity Games
Escape Room The Game: Jumanji Family Edition – Board Game Review
Jumanji has always been an interesting concept and a very enjoyable film thanks to the performance of Robin Williams. The franchise had a spiritual successor in 2018, which starred Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. The movie replaced the original idea of a board game that could suck people in with the formula of it being a videogame. The execution of the new movie proved to be rather interesting and well worth the watch, even though the original could not be thrown off the throne that easily. It seems that the tale of Jumanji isn’t finished just yet, as a videogame is about to be released, as well as a new movie which is supposed to hit the theaters this December. This also brings us to the Escape Room series by Identity Games. They made an edition of Escape Room The Game which revolves around the Jumanji series. We were quite curious to see if this game could suck us in, or if it would just suck.
Contents
- Rules
- Decoder
- Three scenarios + clues
- 16 plastic keys
We noticed one problem with the Escape Room The Game series, and that’s that the materials used for the clues and solving the riddles are extremely cheap. More than often you’ll have to make do with normal paper materials, which sometimes even rip when pressing them out of their molds. This is quite annoying, and even though you can print new materials, it still feels quite sucky when you ruin your materials before you even use them, when the timer is running, having to work with damaged goods. There are a few proper cardboard pieces to be found in the box, but they are too little too few. It also makes things feel even cheaper when some pieces of information are printed on the back of a piece of paper that is used for two clues or that you need to flip over a piece of paper constantly to keep track of what you’re doing. In the box, you do get the decoder, which is certainly a fun object, even though it looks a bit cheap as well.
Mechanics
Just like in a real Escape Room, you’ll need to solve some puzzles within a 60 minutes timeframe, in order to ‘escape’ the scenario at hand. The scenarios in this box are story related, with the first one revolving around finding the new digital Jumanji game and of course getting sucked inside the world of Jumanji. You’ll have three different adventures to embark on in this box, and they should be played in sequence to get a full story. Each of these scenarios will have a few different envelopes, which represent the different stages of the ‘Escape Room’. You’ll have to start with the first envelope, and you can only open the second one when you find the four different keys to escape (or solve) the first part of the adventure. You then have to solve puzzles until you reach the third part and so on.
The puzzles in this edition feel well constructed and they are all solvable with some common sense and the clues that you are given. Most puzzles also show you the sequence of how to solve items, which is also a nice addition to actually solving what is going on, and finding the proper order of the keys. This isn’t always as clear in other Escape Room The Game scenarios.
Even though you can play the scenarios with the digital decoder, you’ll actually need the physical decoder to solve a few of the puzzles. This makes adding the scenarios to the app somewhat useless, except if you don’t have any batteries at home, or for some reason your decoder is busted. You need the markings on the sides to help you with clues, which is a fun addition to the game, and it makes the cheap materials feel a bit more important and decent.
Luck or Strategy?
These Escape Room games don’t really rely on luck. Of course, you can be lucky depending on who is in your team and how easily they can spot the solutions of certain puzzles. Overall the different adventures in this box were well constructed and never felt unfair to solve. While it’s best to divide some tasks or have someone else look at certain clues, we often found that this edition was also very playable with two players and that having a full party could sometimes mean that some people had nothing to do, not because of the lack of things to do, but the cheap quality of the materials and more importantly, the small size of them.
Conclusion
Escape Room The Game: Jumanji Family Edition is a very fun release from Identity Games. It’s actually quite sad that the box only comes with three scenarios, especially for its retail price. While this package will give you a lot of fun for around three hours, once you complete the different scenarios there is no replay value. You do get the decoder, which can be used with other Escape Room The Game releases. We hope extra Jumanji scenarios get released, or perhaps other tie-ins with famous franchises.
Escape Room The Game: Jumanji Family Edition - Board Game Review,
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