Unlock! Heroic Adventures: In Pursuit Of The White Rabbit

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The Unlock! Team hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down and their latest box set “Heroic Adventures” is proof they’re just getting warmed up! When the ERA team was invited to review Unlock’s newest three games, we thought to ourselves “Will these games feel the same as the others? Or will they keep the trend of getting progressively better?” The answer to that question and more coming up…

As usual, the quality of components for an Unlock! game is limited to a deck of cards and an accompanying app. So why do we keep rating this category as slightly above average then? Great question! The creativity and integrated use of the app just keeps getting better! The artwork in this game is also incredible and we often found ourselves just marvelling at all the little details that went into creating each individual card. Some of our team members even felt the level of detail with each card warranted a higher score, but it was counter-balanced by the fact that not everyone is as focused on little artistic details and therefore it seemed to be pretty much on par with the quality of past Unlock! games. Overall it’s a good start though…

The immersive aspect of this game was the real divider amongst us… Most times you’ll hear us talk about the need to create an accompanying atmosphere (via music, funny clothing, scenery changes… etc) in order to appreciate the full immersion of an in-home escape room game. This still holds true In Pursuit Of The White Rabbit, but there were two BIG aspects which played a part in the final decision by our team members… The first aspect (a pro) was how engaging the story was… we actually FELT like we were taken down the rabbit hole in this adventure. From one scene to the next, each part of this game had most of us feeling amused, confused, and basically playing the role of Alice from start to finish. It was amazing how the Unlock! team managed to accurately capture the feeling to be honest. Having said that, it should still be noted that although there’s music within the app, we’d suggest adding some further ‘atmosphere’ to your adventure through decorations, music, silly hats, or whatever you can think of to further capture the Alice In Wonderland vibe. Heck, you can even have the game during a tea party! The second aspect all of us were greatly affected by was the amount of lateral thinking involved (both a pro and a con). On the one hand, the amount of surreal tasks and puzzles had our minds constantly thinking and being creatively engaged which was great. At the same time, the downside of any lateral puzzle is that if the brain can’t figure something out after a certain amount of time has passed it’s easy to become disengaged (which a couple of us did). This leads us to a discussion about the puzzles…

The puzzles themselves obviously created that same debate between us. Is becoming tired due to the amount of creative thinking a fair factor to bring into consideration? What about the opposite? Is the excitement of randomly coming up with a random suggestion that works a fair way to positively score the puzzles? All these questions and emotions came into play for us when evaluating the puzzles. It’s definitely fair to say that some of us felt a bit drained by the end of the game, whereas others were still riding an emotional high from the twists and turns the puzzles revealed. One thing we could all agree upon however was the puzzles were perfectly in theme, and they were creative, and that these puzzles might be the only set of Unlock! puzzles (outside of Dr.Goorse’s Island) where we HIGHLY recommend having more than 3 players. You will need a lot of creative brain power and surprisingly you might find non-puzzle enthusiasts are better at the puzzles. We also enjoyed the puzzle path of this game slightly more than most other Unlock! games, and it’s becoming obvious to us the Unlock! design team are finding newer and better ways of opening up the puzzle paths of this Heroic Adventures box set. For one of our members, the puzzles in this game were the best of all the Unlock! games they had played which is high praise indeed!

And in the end did we have fun? Yes. Was it fun all the time? Mostly, it really depended on when each person’s brain checked out during the experience. Some logic and observation is needed, but for the most part, In Pursuit Of The White Rabbit is the game you should be playing if you enjoy lateral thinking. At the same time, if you’re hard-wired into logic and deduction, or find yourself easily getting frustrated when things don’t make sense to you… this might be a tough one to get through. All of us agreed that 4 brains were better than 3 on this one, so make sure you stack your team with people who will enjoy pursuing that white rabbit and getting caught up in a surreal world of tea parties, an evil red queen, and ever changing scenery.

We want to hear your thoughts! Be sure to comment in the section below or send us a message via ERA’s email, Facebook, or Twitter… As always, happy escaping!