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Post by Todd on Mar 28, 2017 7:28:45 GMT -5
There is still a bit of time left to get in on the second bi-monthly "Escape Room in a Box" from this company. escape-the-crate.com/I haven't tried it myself to this point, but they have an online sample of their puzzle style on their website. The Midnight Express on their Missions page.
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Post by wortelboer on Mar 28, 2017 12:16:06 GMT -5
Thanks for posting this one. Never heard of it before. Looks interesting.
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Post by chrisu on Mar 28, 2017 12:32:42 GMT -5
But it seems they only ship to the US...😭
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Post by craigrj on Mar 28, 2017 17:10:17 GMT -5
But it seems they only ship to the US...😭 Yeah I contacted them over this - international shipping coming in may they reckon.
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Post by dmikester on Mar 28, 2017 22:52:35 GMT -5
Ooh, now this looks cool. Definitely going to check this out. Thanks for the heads-up!
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Post by earthegy on Mar 29, 2017 19:54:34 GMT -5
I signed up for 2 months, thanks! They have a 10% off promo going on their website right now.
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Post by dmikester on Mar 29, 2017 21:26:14 GMT -5
I tried out their free online mini-mission, and it was pretty fun. I liked the writing and the puzzles were actually pretty cool (if very simple), but I did need to use a hint or two to understand the basic structure of the game, which strikes me as not the best design. In reading reviews online, the big complaint I've heard is that the material and items in general are very cheap; basically flimsy pieces of paper with writing on them and then one "premium" item. While reviews are positive about the experience, they do say that for the price, it seems like the materials should be of higher quality. I just placed my order, so we'll see!
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Post by dmikester on Apr 3, 2017 9:12:00 GMT -5
Happy to report that my first Escape the Crate package has shipped. I'll update with my thoughts once I get it; I'm going to invite some friends to come over and play it as if it was an escape room.
EDIT: Well, this was by far the best shipping experience I've had with any of these companies, to be honest MPC included. Not only did they ship right when they said they would, but the packages even arrived earlier than the post office anticipated! I've got the two available boxes now, and I'll be playing through the first crate (and who knows, maybe even the second one) tomorrow night with some friends. Review to follow!
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Post by dmikester on Apr 8, 2017 19:38:30 GMT -5
So we played the first crate, Escape from the Confederate Spymistress, last night. There were six of us playing, and all of us had a really great time and want to do the next crate soon. It also helped that we ended up escaping (albeit with four minutes to spare)! I was very impressed by the whole design. There were a large number of puzzles for how long the experience was (about 10-12), and there was tons of variety (in fact, I believe that there was no repetition of a puzzle type). There was only one puzzle that I would say was not particularly well-designed; we ended up needing hints for it, and even once we finally understood what we were supposed to do, it felt a little lame (there's a lengthy online review of this crate that mentions a similar experience, and I assume it's about the same puzzle). One extremely cool thing is that a number of the puzzles (and I'm going to spoiler-tag this despite it being vague in case someone wants to go into this completely and utterly blind) were based on codes and ciphers that were actually used during the Civil War, which could very much appeal to puzzle solvers here interested in historical coding and code-breaking techniques. Finally, as mentioned in a previous post, a lot of it is just pieces of paper, but they're all used in interactive ways, and there are a couple of items that are fancier and very cool. Overall, I highly, highly recommend this, even for people who aren't necessarily big puzzle people. I was by far the biggest puzzle fan of the group last night, and yet everyone loved it and really got into it. I wouldn't say it's super high difficulty, but there's just so much to do and figure out that it will for sure take about an hour to get through everything, and there is lots and lots of material included in the crate. If this looks interesting to you but you're on the fence, I would go for it; definitely a high quality experience for the price.
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Post by flightoffancy on Apr 9, 2017 14:24:45 GMT -5
I completed the second box, Escape the Queen Anne' Revenge, with a friend. We didn't quite make it within the hour and went slightly over due in part to just opening all the envelopes and examining the contents. We had a good time with all the pieces and were engaged in the story. The puzzles weren't difficult but they were clever and did take some thought. I'm glad I purchased the adventure and I look forward to the next one.
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Post by billfelty on Apr 12, 2017 9:08:49 GMT -5
I also joined. Sounds pretty exciting.
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Post by dmikester on Apr 30, 2017 21:20:12 GMT -5
We just finished the second box (same group as before). For whatever reason, we had a much easier time with this one, probably because we were more used to the structure (we finished in 40 minutes). I highly recommend this one as well, though I don't think the puzzles and the design are quite as good as the first crate. However, this one has a surprising number of cool artifacts, and there are some clever puzzles. However, we found the final puzzle to be a letdown compared to the first crate, and there was again a puzzle that we needed hints for (and this particular puzzle still doesn't make a lot of sense to me; we needed to somewhat brute force the answer). Overall though, we're all very happy with both of these crates, and we're all eagerly looking forward to the next crate!
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Post by dmikester on Aug 31, 2017 23:56:46 GMT -5
Haven't posted here in quite a while, but we just completed the latest Escape The Crate, The Trials of Houdini, and it's by far our favorite one of the bunch. Every puzzle was great and fair, there was a TON of stuff to do, and the envelopes and general design were really clever. We barely made it (53 minutes, and that's only because we completed a bonus challenge that got us an extra five minutes), so it's a solid challenge; by comparison, the last one took us about 40 minutes. It's also totally stand-alone; if you order it on its own, they'll provide you with the one tool, a blacklight, that all of them have required, and you won't need an item from the last box ( there is an ongoing story that may not make much sense if you start here, but it doesn't factor into the puzzles at all). I wouldn't recommend this one for beginners, but if you have a group of friends who are good at puzzles and escape rooms, this is a great buy. escape-the-crate.com/escape-the-trials-of-houdini/
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Post by wortelboer on Sept 1, 2017 9:21:25 GMT -5
Haven't posted here in quite a while, but we just completed the latest Escape The Crate, The Trials of Houdini, and it's by far our favorite one of the bunch. Every puzzle was great and fair, there was a TON of stuff to do, and the envelopes and general design were really clever. We barely made it (53 minutes, and that's only because we completed a bonus challenge that got us an extra five minutes), so it's a solid challenge; by comparison, the last one took us about 40 minutes. It's also totally stand-alone; if you order it on its own, they'll provide you with the one tool, a blacklight, that all of them have required, and you won't need an item from the last box ( there is an ongoing story that may not make much sense if you start here, but it doesn't factor into the puzzles at all). I wouldn't recommend this one for beginners, but if you have a group of friends who are good at puzzles and escape rooms, this is a great buy. escape-the-crate.com/escape-the-trials-of-houdini/Hope your planning on bringing one to Toronto. Sounds like fun!
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Post by dmikester on Nov 9, 2017 13:16:22 GMT -5
Just wanted to quickly post that last month's Escape the Crate, The Lost Colony, is fantastic. Easily the best of all of them, and it has some really dazzling puzzle design that took all of us by surprise. We kept being super impressed by the inventiveness and the huge variety of puzzles, and we barely finished in time (four minutes to spare). Highly, highly recommended, even if five boxes in the story may be a bit hard to follow.
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