OVERALL PRODUCT RATING: 5 Keys
A long time ago, in a deck of cards far, far away, an authentic, immersive Star Wars adventure is about to unfold in the most expected of ways.
We’re starting with the OVERALL section, which typically closes out each of our reviews in order to provide the big picture information about this product. From there, we’ll bounce to one general SCENIC section for the entire product – as all three games have equal quality materials and graphics used. In place of the traditional STORY and PUZZLES sections, we will be replacing them with three mini-reviews – one for each included game.
Star Wars Unlock! The Escape Game is Space Cowboy’s specially licensed commercial outing – packing not one but three different full length home games inside the box. As with each Unlock! offering, a playable Tutorial is included. It should be noted that the Tutorial is the same in every Unlock! series, so once you’ve played it, there’s not much benefit in revisiting it.
Earlier Unlock! releases could be purchased in one of two ways – individually per game, or as a package set housed in a single themed series box. Interestingly, we’ve found that in some instances, it has proven cheaper to purchase each single game one by one on Amazon. Unlock! has since moved to presenting all new sets as a three game pack, but if you’re just wanting a small taste, they do now sell Unlock! Short Adventures as individual 30 minute products.
Space Cowboys also has a series of free, downloadable games – called Unlock! Demo Adventures – available through their website, which you can find by clicking here. They range in length, although several are full 60 minute games. To play them, it’s best if you have access to a printer and several sheets of cardstock, as well as a scissors to cut out each individual card. Just for fun, we did try playing one game “fully digital,” with the help of Photoshop to lay out each of the cards on our virtual desktop – and while it did work, and we still were able to enjoy the Unlock! experience, we found this to be far more time consuming than just taking a few minutes and a few sheets of paper to print them out as intended.
Progressing through an Unlock! game will lead players to either a number or letter – and if correct, this will indicate the next card(s) to draw from the deck.
Each Unlock! game is run through a free app, available in the Apple iTunes and Google Play stores. Through it, you’ll not only manage time limits and receive hints, but also enter various codes and even solve some of the puzzles in tech-driven, digital setting. It’s both important and curious to note that Star Wars Unlock! The Escape Game requires its own dedicated app, and is not playable through the regular Unlock! version you likely already have downloaded.
The app allows games to be played either with or without penalties for incorrect answers. We prefer playing without penalties, as we feel it more truly mimics a physical escape game experience where you may try a code in a lock when you’re uncertain. Although the penalty free mode is activated (in the app’s Settings) by turning off the timer, rest assured you will still receive your escape time at the end. In fact, turning off the timer is the only way to receive an accurate escape time, as penalties add multiple minutes to your overall duration.
Although the Star Wars Unlock! The Escape Game box does indeed hold three unique stand alone games, we’ll be presenting them as one single review simply because they cannot be purchased separately. You’ll notice there is one “OVERALL PRODUCT RATING” above – which we’ve combined together to give an average score. Each individual game within the box will also get its own rating below.
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.
We mentioned that Space Cowboys goes the route of fully card-based escape home games. Each edition is produced to the highest levels of quality – with thick, glossy textures that have the feel of a upscale deck of playing cards. Unlock!’s decks, however, are larger than a traditional card – measuring in at nearly 4.5″ tall by 2.5″ wide.
Something we’ve always enjoyed about Space Cowboys is their use of multiple different artists for each Unlock! box set. What results is a distinctly different animation style, evoking unique moods that help bring each storyworld to life. No two decks within a set will ever feel the same, or even slightly similar, for that matter. In the case of this particular set, cards are full of recognizable characters, ships, and creatures from all across the Star Wars galaxy, creating recognizable easter eggs and cameos for fans of the original film trilogy.
Each game’s respective page within the Unlock! app fully compliments the theme of its storyworld, with unique buttons, sound effects and background music scores to transport the adventure off the cards and bring its storyworld to life all around players.
Escape from Hoth
RATING: 5 Keys RESULT: Win REMAINING: 28:08
Echo Base, an important Rebel stronghold, has managed to remain hidden on the ice planet Hoth for some time. The hostile climate provides excellent cover and protection from the Empire – but you must always remain vigilant!
You head out on a routine patrol with your trusty tauntaun mount, a hearty creature native to Hoth. After an uneventful morning, you take a brief break to rest your tauntaun while you contact Echo Base with an update. However, due to heavy atmospheric disturbance, you can’t reach them.
Your mission: Continue your patrol, explore the ice planet and contact Echo Base!
Escape From Hoth, being the first of three games within this series, sets the bar very high for the other two yet to come. Every minute of this mission is intuitive, logical and action packed.
Each subsequent task feels organic to an action a Rebel character in the actual film might need to make, including some that will bring back fond memories of the fight sequences from the Empire Strikes Back. Hoth’s defenders will guide their own tauntaun, find a way to escape the icy grasp of the mighty Wompa and even battle a malicious fleet of AT-ATs in hopes of protecting the location of the hidden Rebel base.
Unique to Star Wars Unlock! The Escape Game are special advantage cards. Three are picked blindly at the start of each chapter, based on the area of expertise it might give a brave Rebel. It’s not until they’re locked in and the clock starts that their secrets become revealed. In each case, they give specialized abilities, and oftentimes useful advantages to different parts of the mission, so choose wisely and hope for skills that can add the most intense of battles!
As is common with any Unlock! game, Escape From Hoth makes great use of the app to further enhance the puzzle mechanics. At times a tablet or smartphone may magically transform into a necessary tool – for example, binoculars – that actually give rebels a full range of vision. And you’d better hope your battery is charged when that hungry Wompa attacks! What results is one of the most realistic reactions a game could create. Through it all, Escape From Hoth truly does the impossible, and turns a simple deck of cards into an adrenaline-pumping, action-packed, authentic Star Wars adventure!
An Unforeseen Delay
RATING: 5 Keys RESULT: Win REMAINING: 32:08
You are smugglers in the Outer Rim, facing danger and the unexpected every day. Today, while transporting expensive cargo belonging to Jabba the Hutt, you are intercepted by an Imperial Star Destroyer!
Imperial operatives impound your ship, and confiscate everything in your cargo bay. You know it’s only a matter of time before they take a closer look at the cargo and discover Jabba’s hidden illegal goods.
There is no time to waste. You need to break out of your cell, rescue your astromech, and get hold of the cargo. Then all you need to do is recover your ship and escape!
Your objective: Escape with your astromech (co-pilot droid) and the cargo.
Caught red-handed with stolen goods and imprisoned by Imperial guards? ‘An Unforeseen Delay’ may just be the understatement of the year. In this second chapter of Star Wars Unlocked! The Escape Game, the stakes are raised dramatically, as roles shift from Rebel to another iconic occupation from a galaxy far, far away: smuggler. But like they always say, there’s no honor amongst thieves, so just because you aren’t exactly the hero in this story doesn’t mean the Imperial forces will go easy on you.
But a lack of human back-up also doesn’t necessarily translate to a lack of backup. Todo 515 and A4-J4 – two very helpful little droids – are along for the ride, and quickly become vital members of the crew, each with their own skill sets that will be amply put to the test while escaping the Star Destroyer.
Outside the box thinking (or should we say programming) will be required to hack the security system aboard the ship. Each droid becomes an active member of the team taking over when a task requires a tight squeeze or some quick data corrupting. Be advised that one particularly brilliant storyworld interaction will require at least a team of two to play this chapter. Although solo smugglers won’t be left out in the carbonite, they will be forced to forego a considerably memorable moment of the mission.
Again, the sense of immersion is remarkably powerful for a simple deck of cards, creating a tangible mood of being a real life character in personalized Star Wars adventure. And if successful, smugglers will get the chance to make a very clever puzzle-based jump to light speed right from their living room!
Secret Mission on Jedha
RATING: 1 Key RESULT: Win REMAINING: +2:26
You are an Imperial spy sent to infiltrate the Holy City of Jedha. An Imperial pilot transporting a crate of priceless kyber crystals crashed their Zeta-class cargo shuttle on the surface. You must retrieve the crate without alerting the Rebel scum Saw Gerrera or any of his lawless mercenaries on Jedha. There is an Imperial informant waiting for you on the surface with more details. Meanwhile, Imperial Command orbits Jedha in a Star Destroyer. They are within communications range and expect regular updates.
Your mission: Gather intel, maintain your cover story and recover the kyber crystals!
Perhaps this game was designed to be a cautionary tale for why no one should choose the side of evil, because the overall experience as an Imperial spy for the Empire is just… awful. The immersion starts fairly high, investigating a seedy cafe in the Holy City, and interrogating several of its more questionable patrons. Those interacts evoke an authentic ‘Star Wars flavor’ that sets expectations high, especially following the excellent first two chapters of this adventure.
Secret Mission on Jedha is the only game in the Star Wars Unlock! The Escape Game box set that includes a physical object outside of the cards themselves – in this case, a pilgrimage map. That map will be critical to the mission, and used often moving forward – sometimes in ways that feel intuitive and others that are bound to infuriate. At one point, entering the correct code for the map coordinates continuously yielded error messages, only to find out a very arbitrary action needed to happen first that, on its own, was not something a spy might logically think to do.
This mission also makes heavy use of a tedious substitution cipher which is employed multiple times, despite not being fun in the first place. It’s just busy work, presumably to help garner the higher difficulty level given to this third chapter. Worse, some actions expected are so unintuitive that this game became one of the first times we’ve ever needed to crack open a solutions manual in any Unlock! product. And here’s the thing – reading the solutions didn’t produce an “oh, how did we miss that!” type reaction; to the contrary, it was more often “how can that be the answer?!”
If ever there needed clarification, Secret Mission on Jedha answers the question, “why does the galaxy hate the Empire?”
Unlock! has become the one home series that we find ourselves constantly checking online in hopes of finding a new release – and the moment one is available, we order ours immediately. The Unlock! series has consistently proven to be a breath of fresh air in the home game setting – providing experiences that are always clever, fun, story driven and set in a wide variety of unique themes – with the one consistent constant being their ability to inspire the feeling of playing a genuine escape game without ever leaving the comfort of our own home.
In this specially licensed commercial release, Unlock! does a lot of things exceedingly well. Giving players the ability to experience the Star Wars saga from each of its three iconic sides – Rebel, Smuggler and Imperial spy – is such an organic way to bring to life one of the most recognizable storyworld in film history. In the process, it makes each of these three games feel unique and fresh, making it exciting to see what the next twist will be. And though the third chapter admittedly falls apart, that does little to diminish that the first two are among Unlock!’s strongest efforts to date, taking its immersion ‘To Infinity and Beyond!’
(That’s from Star Wars, right?)
*Montu, Escape Authority’s VP, Dog Business™ and lead home game correspondent endorses the opinions found within this review.
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Venue: Space Cowboys
Location: At Home Game
Number of Games: 50+ (3 + 1 Tutorial game included in this box)
GAME SPECIFIC INFORMATION:
Duration: 60 minutes
Capacity: 1-6 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): $32.99 (Amazon.com)
