ThinkFunEscape The Room Secret of Dr. Gravely's Retreat - an Escape Room Experience in a Box for Age 13 and Up

At home escape room boxes are always a little weird, they can only partially replicate the experience of a good in person escape room where you're walking around investigating things, but for a small group this little adventure was a nice close second to enjoy sitting around a table. We had a good variety of puzzles and with their special patented decoder ring technology the special joy of yelling out, "Red ladybug with only one dot! Yellow bullseye! Green yin-yang! Blue... Venn diagram but the circles don't overlap! I said NOT overlapping!" It's definitely a less tactile experience than this company's doll-house escape room, but still managed to have a few very hands on puzzles.What I really liked about this adventure was the cohesive storyline. If you like a story rich murder mystery investigation you'll probably enjoy unlocking the various "Scene cards" to learn more about what is happening at Foxcrest Retreat. Everything was styled for the time period, we met several characters and uncovered a simple but very sensical plot that tied them all together and the details were consistent throughout all the puzzles. I especially like that nothing needs to be used up or destroyed while solving and when you're done it even has a guide to re-pack everything to pass along to someone else to play, it's not a wasteful one-time use product.I will say like a lot of small escape room boxes some of the puzzles rely on spotting *tiny* details so having excellent lighting and reading glasses or magnifying lenses on hand might be a good idea. We also had one poor member of our investigation team that was red/green color blind and unfortunately that made it very difficult for him to contribute and play along for a lot of parts of the adventure. But thankfully because the story was so rich he at least got to enjoy the narration and seeing the story unfold.

My wife and I have quickly become huge fans of ThinkFun's Escape The Room series. Stargazer's Manor was awesome, albeit super-easy. Dr. Gravely is just as good, perhaps even better; but just like Stargazer, it was on the easy side for an intermediate difficulty level game. However, the game had its share of challenges and "aha" moments.The puzzles were once again straightforward and the clues not vague. No giant leaps of logic. There was less hand-holding this time than in Stargazer's Manor, but I still felt like the game flow was curated to some degree.There is no concurrent puzzling to be had in this game. That is, although you may have clues/pieces to several different puzzles in front of you at any point during the game, there's only one puzzle that can be solved at a time. However, sometimes figuring out which puzzle _can_ be solved is half the challenge. There were certainly times during the game when my wife and I looked at each other and said, "Well what do we do now?"The story line in the two Escape The Room games we've played thus far seems to have a better flow to it than in other escape game series, and the puzzles are well-integrated into the theme.We've really enjoyed the two Escape The Room titles we've played. Next up is The Cursed Dollhouse.

I just received this today and 72 minutes later I have it solved playing solo.The quality of the product is extremely high and should be able to be passed on with no issues as long as you are careful opening taped envelopes. This set did have several puzzles where I could see someone tearing a puzzle by accident being a bit overzealous, but I will say I liked the variety of those puzzles. Definitely on the high end of like minded products for quality / durability.As far as game play, I liked the concept, I enjoyed the variety of puzzles, but I found the clues to be a little too apparent and obvious. It was very linear and no doubt on a). that you found a clue and b). where that clue was going to be used. I would have appreciated a less linear approach with more trying to "fit the pieces together".Overall good play, but still not as good as Deadbolt Mystery Society. With ability to reuse (and their awesome instructions on repacking) it is worth the money if you have friends / family to pass on to. Especially if you are new to Escape / Mystery games.

My family loves escape rooms, we have done many. We decided to give a couple of the escape room games a go. They are play once and optionally pass it on. I figured for the price it was like going to see a movie, but something we could do together.The game play was very linear, you could really only work on 1 or 2 puzzles at a time. That said, my family liked this better than all scattering to work on different puzzles like the other one we played. We felt we had to work more together. The puzzles were challenging and fun but not real hard, probably intermediate level. The game recommend 2 hours for 4 people, but we finished in 1 hour. One thing we really liked in the game is the solution wheel, it basically lets you confirm your answer before you move on to next step. The game says it is for up to 8 people but more than 4 with the linear play of puzzles would be hard.Another big plus is the online material. It was cool that they had music play lists to set the mood. The hint guide was nice and easy to use. We used it once. I like that you can get partial hints. And they had a very nice online guide for repacking if you do want to pass the game on.We liked the game enough I bought the other two from this publisher. Would definitely recommend for up to 4 players.

This was fun but it involved almost entirely physical manipulation puzzles that were impossible to do as a group. Still a fun time and the themes etc were great but it wasn’t a crowd pleaser.

Played with 11 year old twins and we worked nonstop for almost two hours and just made it under the timer. So much fun. Relief when we finished, but first thing they said was to order another of similar so have done that and hope it is as much fun. Stargazer's Manor just ordered. Fingers crossed it is as great. They loved it.