Maker: Talking Tables
Title: Host Your Own
Game: Escape from the Museum
Year: 2023
Price: $34.99
Language: English
Internet access req’d?: Yes
Cipher types: Simple substitution, anagram, null letter, book code
Players: 2-6
Difficulty: Unrated
Rating: 3.5 of 5
(Box artwork and story (c) Talking Tables)
About the company: British. From the About-Our Story page: “It was at her mother’s kitchen table, our founder Clare discovered her love of tablescaping and the joy of bringing people together. Such was the appeal, Clare made the decision to give up the security of her successful corporate career to launch Talking Tables, from her own kitchen table. Rather than turning to external investors for funding, Clare grew the business organically. To this day it’s very much still a family owned and led business.”
The majority of Talking Table’s products involve things like napkin rings, flower vases and plates. The games seem to have been an afterthought, added to give people something to do together. There are a number of kids’ play activities and some boardgames. At the moment, the line-up includes seven escape rooms (Kyoto, Mars, New York, London, Egypt, etc.), and five murder mysteries. I haven’t seen anything on who their escape room designers are. Generally, the escape games are on the pricey side, between $30 and $50 per box, but as I write this they seem to have been discounted to the $20-$35 range.
Story: You’re an avid patron of a museum, and the night guard recognizes you whenever you drop by. One day, he tells you about a secret exit the building designer was rumored to have installed long ago, with hints throughout the exhibits, and then he warns you to pay attention to the time or you’re going to get locked inside some night. Well, tonight’s that night. How fortuitous.
(Opening the box)
Along with a stack of paper props, you get a QR code that takes you to an introductory video with the night guard. The task next is to go from room to room in the museum until you get to the secret exit and the end of the game. The props consist of two stacks of paper – pre-punched sheets of supporting props (bits of buildings, various insects, dinosaur cards, etc.), and 18 information/puzzle cards representing each of the rooms you have to go through in order (that is, 18 puzzles).
The puzzles and riddles all resolve to the name of the next room, which kind of makes finding the answers a lot easier because you have a pretty good hint right at the outset – that is, if there’s only one room that starts with “B” and is five letters long (“Bears”), you don’t need to figure out the complete answer to know that the next room is going to be the Bear exhibit.
Some of the riddles are logic based (if there are three butterflies and the first one is red, go to room A; if there are two butterflies and one is twice as heavy as the other, go to room B; etc.), but the vast majority are either wordplay (a crossword puzzle, or a wordsearch) or some form of cipher. Some of the ciphers are variants on steganography, others involve anagramming a name, eliminating letters from a group (null letter), or performing simple substitution (with symbols, or numeric ciphers). There’s even an honest-to-God book code. After a while, the riddles start taking on a sort of sameness. Don’t take me wrong – I like that there are ciphers, but the riddles don’t have the breadth and scope that you get with Unlock! and Exit.
I guess the thing I have the biggest issue with is the amount of chaff. That is, all of the supporting props, artwork and so on that aren’t actually part of the puzzles. Each “room” consists of a card. One side of the card will have pictures of something from one of the exhibits (insects, mammals, birds, whatever) and the other side will have the puzzle itself and hints as to which of the punch-out props you’ll need. In 99% of the rooms, none of the exhibit content contributes to the task of finding the name of the next room. I just skipped that stuff, and went immediately to the other side of the card to get the wording of the puzzle.
(Game in progress)
The game doesn’t seem to be rated for difficulty, but I’d say it’s aimed at young teenagers and may be moderately challenging. The instruction booklet has two levels of hints, plus full solutions for each riddle. I needed the first level hints for 2-3 puzzles just to get slight nudges in the right direction, or to confirm I had the correct idea before I started marking up the cards. There were two riddles where I needed the full solutions because I either couldn’t find the prop required, or I just wasn’t following the logic involved. All of the puzzles can be solved without needing to guess the answer, but that one I had trouble with was a bit trickier than the others. A few of them might be difficult for anyone that doesn’t normally work with simple substitution ciphers (where each letter in the alphabet is replaced by a different letter, a number or a symbol), or book codes.
Escape the Museum is designed for two or more players simply in terms of how much work is required in finding the props or room cards, and for punching out the props from the frame sheets. There’s nothing preventing solo play. If you want to “play against the clock,” you can set a timer to ninety minutes. I took 2.5 hours (150 minutes), but a lot of that was spent sorting through all of the sheets of paper trying to find stuff. I also forgot about the cipher wheel printed plainly on the inside cover of the box because I had limited work space and I’d set the box off to the side to get it out of the way.
(More props)
Overall, the game looks good, and it has a superficial educational value if you just want to know the differences between something like mammals and invertebrates. The artwork is good, if a bit cartoonish in places, and the quality of the props is good. The game offers reset instructions if you want to give it to someone else, but it’s basically along the lines of “use the supplied tracing paper and don’t mark up anything.” You do get a pad of notepaper if you need it, and there’s a photo frame if you want to take selfies of the team saying “I solved Escape from the Museum.” You’ll need internet to watch the intro video to find out what room to start in, and for the finale video when you get to the end.
Is Escape the Museum fun? It’s ok
Is there any replay value? No
Can you gift the finished game to someone else? Maybe
Does it have ciphers? Some steg., anagramming, null letter, an actual book code, and lots of simple substitution
===== Caution – Spoilers =====
No spoilers this time. The game’s pretty easy, and you can see a number of the props either by looking at the back of the box, or by checking out the Amazon page.
The Black Chamber 