Inspectors' Review:
What do you mean there isn't any burgers in here?
I am a purrfect candidate for treasure hunting, wouldn't you say?
This paper is the perfect pillow!
What do you mean you don't know the pirate's code???
I had a near encounter...with a box!
A park of dinosaurs? Such a weird idea :P
Boss' Review:
Trapped Escape Rooms in a family-run escape room company that started back in 2015. During the pandemic, they decided to create a series of at home escape games to give players the same thrill their escape rooms provide in their own home. They currently offer three experience – Taco Tuesday, Retro Rad Pizza Adventure, and The Spielburger Box Set. While I haven’t played any of Trapped’s in-person games, I thoroughly enjoyed the audio escape adventures and am excited to dig into The Spielburger Box Set today.
Premise/Story:
The premise of this game revolves around the famous Stephen Spielburger hiding secret burgers in some of his top cinematic masterpieces. He says that finding these burgers will provide with you the clue to discover and gain his greatest treasure. Much like a traditional escape room, there is a fun theme running through the game with a goal in mind. There is no standard storyline but I did enjoy learning little behind the scene tidbits about some of the most famous films. I also found the ending, this great treasure, to fit really well with how the game is set up.
This particular game is non-linear, that is to say you are free to explore the DVDs themselves in any particular order once you get past the first puzzle. You utilize a series of website to navigate into the different films where you input the answer to the puzzles. The self-contained nature of each DVD lent itself well to the theme of the game and the animated short clips on with each film was perfect for the style of game play. This is the kind of game you could play easily over the course of days by doing a DVD a night or is excellent for dividing up when playing with a group.
Puzzles:
Each DVD contains two puzzles that heavily rely of logic and word puzzles. I found google really became my friend while I was playing. What set these puzzles off from the standard logic word puzzles was they physicality of the puzzles. It wasn’t something as simple as writing things in your puzzle note book but, rather, moving things around, noticing patterns, and overlaying things. The word part of each puzzle was only a step towards the conclusion and I enjoyed that complexity. I will also note you will need to know your popular movies for this game as some puzzles relied of knowing these films even if only the basics of them. This game is entirely paper based and requires writing on the paper and taping things together. The solutions for each puzzle was funny and contained lots of puns related to the theme which I enjoyed.
The Company:
In terms of customer service, Trapped was extremely accommodating. Their website does’t have a designation for shipping outside the USA (because shipping is quite varied) so I emailed them inquiring to make a purchase. They were prompt in checking shipping costs and shipping out the game so it arrived around the 2 week mark. The there was some wear on one puzzle component but that most likely was related to travel and didn’t impact the game.
As for the hint system, it works but could use some tweaking. Some of the puzzles require certain orientation of things to work and I struggled with one in "Mandibles" pretty badly. There was a tendency to jump straight to providing the solution without giving players the chance to get an example. For me this was important in the "Mandibles" puzzle because I really struggled to visualize it. That said all the other puzzles were extremely enjoyable and the hints were able to nudge me along.
Conclusion:
I found The Spielburger Box Set to be an enjoyable escape room in the box style puzzle game with an enjoyable theme, pun-filled puzzles, and an excellent use of physicality in paper puzzles. I really enjoyed laying out the puzzle components and see them bring together to provide the key piece of information you need to find the solution. I think this is an excellent game to play with friends for dividing and conquering and for someone who is a big movie buff.
If you are interested in this game and other Trapped at home games, check it out here.
If you like or are curious about audio escape adventures, I highly recommend their Spirit Train game if you enjoy Studio Ghibli! Let me know if I should post a review about this game!
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