Thursday, February 1, 2018

Family Game Review - Exit: The Polar Station



My sister Sally got us this game for Christmas and I was dying to play it. It says on the box that it takes 1-2 hours so we waited until we had plenty of time to set aside for it. (Even though I secretly thought we'd do the game much faster!). It's a one-play only game.


The idea of this game is to simulate an Escape Room Experience. You're trapped in a Polar Station with rescue helicopters about to leave. You only have a notebook you found and a mysterious decoder disk.


You start with one Riddle card and you have to solve puzzles to gain more Riddle cards. When you solve a puzzle you work out a three digit number which opens a drawer or cupboard in the room you're trapped in (revealing more clues). The puzzles were great, all different kinds of puzzles. Anagrams, number puzzles, impossible to solve puzzles and puzzles using things you wouldn't expect. We had to cut things out of the notebook, scribble things in it and use all of our collective mental efforts to solve them.



It took us 2 hours 43 minutes to complete! So much for my earlier confidence. :D

When we were solving the puzzles it was great but there were also times that we'd be stuck for 5-15 minutes not knowing what to do next. It was quite frustrating. There are clue cards you can use if you want to but we were reluctant to rely on them. We did eventually use them a few times as the game went on.

We all said how mentally tired we were after we'd finished. 

JD weeping with relief as we finally escaped the polar station.

It was a cleverly made game. Puzzle games are often too easy but this one wasn't! It was simple to set up, just a few minutes getting things out of the box. It took too long to play but that's a difficult thing to gauge as it depends on the people playing it. If we played another one we'd break up playing it between two sessions instead of persevering to the end.

Ratings: Emma - 4, JD - 3, Leigh - 4, Erin - 3


Other Game Reviews:

Battleblock Theater

Cluedo

Guts of Glory

Spelunky

Mint Tin Mini Apocalypse

Escape: Curse of the Temple


Dungeons & Dragons

Keep Talking & Nobody Explodes

Monopoly Deal

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