Mission: MAYA by Odd Odyssey Games

Inspectors' Review:

• Locks are delicious!

• Why won't it open?!?!?

• This deck of cards also looks delicious...can you unwrap it for me?

• Gotta stretch before a marathon, right?

• Doesn't matter if it's a puzzle one!

• The box is an excellent cushion!

• This games plays on my weakness...literacy...

• This coin does something I swear!

• Of course I don't know what but you can find that out on your own!

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Boss' Review

Back in May I reviewed the Kickstarter exclusive prequel game to this escape room in a box but now I finally was able to dig into the pièce de résistance! Mission: MAYA was created by Canadian husband and wife duo, Kyle and Dana, of Odd Odyssey. This game was developed as a project during the pandemic when their physical escape room, Ready Set Go Adventures, had to stay closed. As it stands, Mission: MAYA is not available to the public yet but they plan to market it soon and you can subscribe to their website to be the first to notified. Now, onto the game!

Mission: MAYA has you hired to recover the sacred Idol of Kapookan, a king turned god in ancient Mayan mythology. This idol, which was hidden for centuries, was the target of notorious black market archeologies Dr. Hanz (the person you were tracking in the prequel game). After locating Hanz's crash site and his research notes, you and your company hope to find what he was attempting to steal. Yet, Hanz has a tendency to encrypt his research notes so it will take all your puzzling brain power to find the idol somewhere in Mount Kap.

In terms of narrative/story, this game is marketed as a escape room experience and as such there is more of a theme rather than a narrative. You have characters, a goal, and a back story but in the midst of the game you motivated by exploration and discovery rather than plot. There is no change in story when you open a chest or find an item. The ending has a brief debriefing that suggest more to come but ultimately this game is puzzle focused. That said, Odd Odyssey did an excellent job setting up the game that carried the puzzling onwards. I found the theme was well put together and the components made sense in the story, even the safe! The design quality of the game was excellent for a board game production. Everything worked as intended and while the plastic element did take away from an immersive quality but I felt the effort in design worked for the escape room genre this game falls within.This game truly embodies a escape room experience which was exciting and thrilling to do in the comfort of my home.

For puzzles, I found them generally well constructed and quite versatile. To provide context before I say more, the way the game unfolds is that you start by drawing a map piece card out a deck and explore the surroundings of that card. There are numbers on the card that point to drawing out that specific card to narrow in on a part of the location and in many cases that number reveals a puzzle, but it can also depict a collected item or a chest that needs unlocking in the future. Each puzzle solution is either a four letter solution or a four number solution and those solutions will prompt you to draw additional cards that open new areas to explore or give you an item you need later. In many ways, they used quite traditional board game tropes to simulate progression in that game that I thought was well done! My favourite part was assembling the board (map) as I kept collecting new map pieces. It aided the exploration theme as well as allowed you to easily backtrack and check out old spaces without any chaos.

The puzzles range from a logic pattern laying, ciphers, math, logic, and quite a bit of audio clueing. I did find the puzzles in the beginning were not as strong as they were missing some cluing. There are some cases where the room you discover has an additional puzzle that isn’t on a separate number and you may miss it. I ended up typing in every card number into the hints before I moved on to make sure I wasn’t missing a puzzle. In this frame of mind, I felt this game needed a bit more structure to get you started. Once I got into the caves things became more focused but starting the game I was a little overwhelmed. My advice is to use the hint site to keep you focused if you need it. Now the puzzles themselves had a good variety for only having four numbers/letters for each. Their solutions didn’t reveal any story elements but the satisfaction came from opening up a new area of the board (you can lay the cards down and create an actual map and I highly recommend this. Ultimately, the puzzles were predominantly paper and had enough variety that kept me engaged through a balance of challenge and theme, as well as provided the satisfaction needed to keep moving forward.

In terms of customer service, I received this as a kickstarter and I found the company to be very prompt with shipping and delivery. The game was well package and gave off a board game style vibe that I enjoyed. There hint system was decent to keep me focused while exploring but I felt there wasn’t enough clues on certain puzzles that could have benefitted from a point that explains the puzzle without giving the answer. I also encourage any time a creator provides audio to also provide some transcription of the audio for people to follow along and I do think this game could use this as well.

In conclusion, Mission: MAYA is a fascinating escape room in the box that utilizes a balance of board game and escape room that I haven’t seen in many games. The theme is well developed and gathers players around the box to unravel and explore the mountains and caves of Mount Kap. While the game could use a bit more structure when players get started, I felt these critiques are quite minor and can easily be changed. This game can easily keep you occupied for two hours and $65 Canadian dollars I felt it was pretty decent for a puzzle tabletop game. I recommend this game for escape room fans who also enjoy tabletop board game elements. This is great to do with friends as the lack of story means you can focus on discussion and solving. Keep an eye out for this game’s release as it’s definitely a game to check out.

Check out their website here.