Maker: Space Cowboys
Title: Unlock!
Game: W.A.F.F.’s Odyssey
Year: 2024 (for the box set)
Price: $36.99
Language: English
Internet access req’d?: No
Cipher types: Steganography
Players: 1-6
Difficulty: 3 of 3
Rating: 4.5 of 5
(Box artwork and story (c) Space Cowboys)
W.A.F.F.’s Odyssey is the third of three games in the Extraordinary Adventures box set. As such, it’s marked as a difficulty of 3 out of 3. Note that you need the app from the Apple or Google play stores running on a mobile device. Otherwise, there’s no other need to access internet during the game.
(Starting props – the deck and the app on the tablet)
Story: You’re out exploring space in your 1-man ship when you crash land on a strange planet. There’s nothing living here, so it’s just a matter of fixing your rocket and getting back on your way. What’s stopping you?
Fairly early on, you discover a small robot dog that you befriend and name W.A.F.F., although the initials are never explained. W.A.F.F. teaches you his language, in which he communicates through a series of symbols, to help you repair your ship. This relates to the two special buttons on the app – Machine and W.A.F.F. There are only a few machines this time, one of which makes use of your touch panel, and two use your device’s camera. One of the camera machines gives you AR, and the other is actual facial recognition.
(Ship prop)
As for the W.A.F.F. app, these are generally simple interactions that unlock further progress for access to the machines. For the most part, they just use the touch screen.
There are around 10 special cards this time – mostly symbol cards rather than having numbers or letters (and one “special” special). The riddles are an uneven mix of logic puzzles, with a little bit of brainteasing, and a couple examples of steganography; there are no other ciphers in this game. The logic element involves trying to understand W.A.F.F.’s language, which uses color mixing and generating new symbols from the collection you already have.
(Start card)
Although Odyssey is a difficulty 3, I found it to be a little easier and more fun than both Restart and Hollywood Confidential. At the least, I didn’t have problems with the in-app hint system. But, there were a few puzzles that I completely failed to understand, and I needed hints on those. Unfortunately, the hints do the standard thing of giving a very vague “nudge,” and then going directly to the solution. So, on the two puzzles I had the most trouble with, I knew the answers from the hints, and could kind of reverse engineer them, but I had to wait and look at the walkthrough PDF to find out where my problems were. Then I kicked myself in the head because those riddles are obvious in hindsight.
You start with 90 minutes on the clock, and I finished just 16 minutes over, plus 11 extra minutes in penalties, and 3 hints, for a final result of 3 of 5 stars. That’s not too bad for a first time through. The two puzzles that slowed me down the most were part of in-app machines, and every mistake was scored as a penalty. Eventually, I either got lucky and reached the answer by accident, or I resorted to the hints and solution.
One of the endgames involved recreating your ship from the punch out stock card, and then having W.A.F.F. “trace out” a path to look for damage (he doesn’t actually move over the cards). This is exactly the same gimmick Think Fun employed in The Cursed Dollhouse, but Odyssey does it better.
(Play through one stats screen)
The second time through, I needed 35 minutes, and still ended up taking 3 machine penalties. (One because I slipped up and hit the wrong button, the other two because I was working from memory and got the wrong number from the cards as I was trying to solve the puzzle. I did need to refer back to my notes for that one.) Otherwise, I did really well up to the facial recognition step. On the first play through, the app did fine; but on the second it refused to start the recognition scan. Apparently the overhead lighting in my room made my eyes too dark, and I had to tilt my head up a lot more for the scan to begin then actually finish. Still, I got a final result of five stars, and you can’t do much better than that.
The artwork is really good, and I like the way W.A.F.F. is portrayed. I didn’t listen to the music much, but what I heard was ok. The riddles are challenging, but not overly tricky or cheat-like. One of the stegs was unique and I was pretty happy to figure it out quickly. And the game makes good use of some of your mobile device’s special features.
(Photo close-up – “Calling Captain Tom.”)
Is W.A.F.F. fun? Yes, definitely
Is there any replay value? Maybe once
Can you gift the finished game to someone else? Yes
Does it have ciphers? Three stegs.
(Play through two stats screen)
Highly recommended.
===== Caution – Spoilers =====
You start out in your ship, and it is shaking as you enter atmosphere. The card shows the vibrations, and two of the symbols look like something that should be in the special section of the deck. Actually, they’re just “T” and “V.” Take those cards and use them to figure out how to handle the flickery screens in the associated machine app (you should be able to get the number for that). Hold cards T and V away from your face – you probably will see grayish arrows that you need to press in the app.
Your ship crashes and you have to suit up and exit the loading bay to explore your new environment. Note that you don’t get to see your character until the big reveal at the end. You find a trash heap, and a small robot dog hiding in a box. What kind of a bone do you give an AIBO? After befriending it, you call it W.A.F.F. and start thinking about making repairs and moving on to some place more populated. W.A.F.F. gives you a few pebbles and makes marks in the sand that you work out are its way of communicating.
Your first task is to get sulfur and clay to regenerate your life support systems. This involves following W.A.F.F. to locations around the trash heap, and getting the instructions on how to find sulfur (symbol manipulation and color theory). This ends Day One.
On Day Two, you need to “caulk” a hole in the hull of your ship. You have a rubber tire, but you need to mix it down first. Here, we get another set of cards for generating new symbols in an all-new way. There are four cards with markings around the corners. Rotating the cards to form the shapes needed will form numbers in the middle of the shapes. These numbers are either for the next cards, or for determining how much energy to give W.A.F.F. to recharge it when it collapses mid-game.
(Card examples)
You’ll also find a card reader card. Looking at the trash heap, you’ll find an ID card, giving you permission to take the “special” special card from the deck. Combine the reader and ID cards to get the next number.
Later, you need a new antenna for your ship. You get this by placing the location cards you’ve found around the trash heap card, then rotating your device to point in the two directions you haven’t visited yet.
When your ship is ready, you’ll be asked for facial recognition. The app should use your selfie camera aimed at you. Hold your device such that your eyes and lips are in the right locations within the grid. You may have to tilt your head up to get more light for the scan to start, and don’t move or the scan will abort in the middle.
The last task will be to assemble the ship prop, and trace W.A.F.F.’s footprints around the decks. The app machine will ask for the color and number of the digits showing through the deck holes (steganography) as represented by symbols, in the order W.A.F.F. “encounters them.” This one is very similar to the centipede puzzle in the shower room of Think Fun’s Cursed Dollhouse. When you liftoff, you get the big reveal: The planet you’re visiting is Earth, you’re non-native to it, and W.A.F.F.’s former owner was a human girl, but there’s no indication of what happened to the planet’s former inhabitants. But hey, you’ve made a new friend!
The Black Chamber 