RATING: 0 Keys          RESULT: Quit          REMAINING: — (Lost interest) 

DON’T OPEN [this box because it will make you feel] DEAD INSIDE.

Your group of survivors is out scavenging for supplies when you discover a large, walled-in community. You cannot hear or see anything beyond the thick walls. You walk along the perimeter until you find a door slightly ajar. Cautiously, you all venture inside, weapons drawn.

After determining there are no walkers inside, you look around the sparsely decorated hideout. There is a large, steel door at the back of the room that presumably leads into the community. When you turn the handle, the door you entered slams shut and locks. That’s when you see a note pinned to the door:

“Dear Stranger,

You have stumbled upon what could prove to be a mutually beneficial situation. We are a well-defended community, but we also have a much higher purpose. This is a self-sustaining group of great thinkers who will lead humanity into a new age. Many seek asylum, but we have no use for anyone who is not truly worthy. Therefore, we have created a test for those who find this place. We want our members to be versed in very important disciplines from the world of the living: math, science, humanities, logic, etc. In return, we offer safety and sustenance. 

We have been notified of your arrival. You now have 90 minutes to complete the test, open this door and be of service to our endeavor. If you cannot solve the puzzles within 90 minutes, our guards will arrive to silence you.

Sincerely,

The Collective.” 

The Walking Dead is an ultra-popular TV series that spanned eleven seasons, while also simultaneously spawning six different spin-off runs. It reach has touched virtually all aspects of entertainment, including multiple iconic Halloween Horror Night’s haunts at Universal Parks in both Florida and California, video games, and now, finally, escape games.

Devoted fans of the brand likely celebrated news of this release – that is, at least, until opening the box to learn the content inside has almost nothing to do with The Walking Dead storyworld at all. This box is devoid of the inclusion of any established characters from any facet of the IP, and, for the most part, that includes the walkers themselves, aside from a few of the most contrite and hallow mentions like “solve this ridiculous math problem to keep out the walkers.” Simply put, Escape Room in the Box’s officially licensed “The Walking Dead” is an insult to the passionate fandom this franchise has long maintained.

As we’ve touched on previously, being a home game, we define “Scenic,” from a graphic design perspective, as well as the quality, weight and feel of print materials inside the box.

Inside Escape Room in a Box, there’s a lot of content. Pages and pages of printed paper, a few small science-ish themed physical components (like a measuring vial and jar) and a small locked box. And while Mattel packs the most “authentic-style physical content” into their home games, once again in The Walking Dead’s box, it all feels cheaply made.

The box and its lock are cast from flimsy plastic – so much so that they actually feel like they could fall apart if you turn the dials on them one too many times, something in itself that proves to be a challenging feat given the wheels rarely stay put as you’re setting a code. The printed materials have the sense of being screened on low-grade copy paper.

Unlike many other home games, Escape Room In A Box has no companion app of any sort – meaning The Walking Dead has no themed background music, sound effects, ambiance, or official game time. (You’ll need to use your own phone’s stopwatch to keep track.)

They say to ‘never judge a book by its cover,’ but in their third outing, Mattel’s Escape Room in a Box product proves to be just as consistently bad as ever. It all begins with a note in the rules informing players they are required to limit themselves to just five hints – a remarkable feat in a game comprised of nineteen of the most illogical and convoluted puzzles anywhere to be found. But things only manage to get worse as time progresses.

Do you like tons of math riddles in your escape games? Well then you’re in for a treat. (Apparently zombies are as adverse to them as we are, because solving those calculations is the only thing to keep walkers at bay.) The game itself is somewhat structured as two acts – one before opening “the large steel door” and the other after. The majority of its first half are tedious, inane, and often illogical paper puzzles. Imagine our surprise when finding out that the majority of the second was ‘now do all those same tasks again with a slightly different setting.’

Winning or losing has never been important to our team; for us, an escape game is always about the experience. For that reason, it is not in our interest to ever try to brute force a code for any given lock. The Walking Dead is the first time that we intentionally broke open the cheap plastic lock with our bear hands just to bring an end to a terribly uninspired task.

Far worse from a product design perspective – but at the same time an absolute act of mercy – halfway through the game we just freely found the hidden compartment for the final medallion that serves as the proverbial ‘exit door key.’ Unlike the lock we referenced above, this was entirely by accident, because it really was that obvious, and just behind an unlocked hatch. It’s hard to say ‘this ruined the game’ while describing something that was among the worst we’ve seen right out of the box, but it absolutely took away any further willingness to continue to endure the torture that is The Walking Dead’s painfully poor puzzle design.

Ultimately, we’d put ourselves through more than enough. With the final prize already in hand, what was the point? No puzzle was fun, and worse, they were often infuriating. We packed up the box without playing a multitude of remaining puzzles and will never speak of this again. It may be difficult to find the words to describe how Escape Room in a Box’s The Walking dead made us feel – but, as they say, who needs words when they have a baboon:

Thankfully, Mattel’s Escape Room in a Box: The Walking dead has been discontinued. We’ve opted to still share this review with you because it remains widely available on eBay.

*Montu, Escape Authority’s VP, Dog Business™ and lead home game correspondent endorses the opinions found within this review.

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Venue:  Mattel

Location: At Home Game

Number of Games: 5 (1 in this box.)

GAME SPECIFIC INFORMATION:

Duration: 90 minutes

Capacity: 8 people

Group Type: Private / You will not be paired with strangers (but if you are, call 911 immediately to report a home invasion.)

Cost (at Publish Time): Prices vary (ebay.com)