Race to Escape. No it doesn’t have anything to do with prisons, food trucks or escaped prisoners (UK news, September 2023). It is a fantastic escape room board game. Escape rooms have become a very popular pastime and are excellent entertainment. If trying to find clues and figure out puzzles is your thing, you can now escape the room in board game form with Race to Escape – The Escape Room Board Game from Ideal. Do you have what it takes to escape the mystery house?
Race to Escape is a re-playable 3D escape room family board game for 1-6 players, age 8+. It has a playing time of approximately 30 minutes. Includes 80 puzzles to solve, enabling players to try and escape the locked rooms in a 3D mystery house.
In the box:
- 3D gameboard and gameboard clips
- 6x Character Playing Pieces and Character Stands
- Dice
- 80x Clue Cards and Clue Card Cover
- Clue Card Holder
- Magnifying Glass
- Mirror
- Newspaper
- Chance Cards
- Clue Coins
- Scorepad
- Instruction Manual
Escape room games started by getting locked in a real room with a group of friends. You were given an hour to find all the clues to enable you to escape the room. Escape room games evolved, and you can get games to play at home where you add clues around your own home. You can even buy print-at-home escape rooms. Now you can play in board game format with Race to Escape. And unlike most escape room games, this one is re-playable.
I enjoy playing escape room games, having an array of clues, puzzles and brain teasers to solve is excellent. They are lots of fun and a great bonding experience as everybody must work together to try and solve the clues for a common goal. Race to Escape is a family-friendly escape room that the kids can get involved it and is an enjoyable and fun game for kids and adults.
Escape rooms, whether a venue you go to or at home experience, are generally in a room with clues placed around it. In Race to Escape, the box the game comes in is the escape room, or rather a mystery house with several rooms to escape from. You are not playing to escape a room, but a series of rooms in the house to make your escape.
In Race to Escape, players need to work together as a team to try and solve puzzles from hidden clues around the rooms to escape – there are 80 puzzles to solve. Players are not just trying to escape one room, but a series of three rooms in order to escape the mystery house.
Race to Escape uses the box as the board. Inserts slotted into the box create walls and split the box into different rooms and the rooms are packed with hundreds of clues to find and solve before you can move into the next room, eventually escaping the house.
The game features six different puzzle types to solve. Players must use mirrors and magnifying glasses to find clues. Reveal hidden words or even create words, translate symbols, use the crossword, find hidden passwords and secret codes in order to help them escape the three rooms and ultimately the mystery house as fast as they can.
Can you and your teammates solve the clues to unlock the rooms and eventually leave the house?
Overall, Race to Escape is an excellent fun and reasonably challenging escape room puzzle game for kids and families to enjoy. The puzzles are great fun, using the 80 clue cards, and the rooms have hundreds of hidden clues to help you unlock all of the doors and escape. This makes it a very playable game that can be played more than once (unlike a lot of other escape room games that I have played where they are just a one use game as once you solve the clues the game doesn’t change).
Having the board as the playing board and escape rooms is excellent. The 3D mystery house is excellent and adds an element of fun to the game. The box easily transforms into a mystery house with separate rooms – it slots together easily (building the internal walls). It is bright and colourful with some great artwork.
Whilst it is a board game, it isn’t just a game of working your way around a board – the walls are littered with clues, and you must use objects like mirrors to reveal some of the answers to proceed.
This is a fun puzzle solving game that is excellent family entertainment. It is a game of collaboration, logic and deduction game. It is fantastic for putting your mind to the test and gets everybody working together and having lots of fun.
I like this game a lot, especially as each time you play, there are plenty of different clues to make the game different each and every time so that it not just a one use game.
Race to Escape is fantastic fun for the entire family. It puts your brain to work (without being so hard that kids will lose enjoyment). It doesn’t even require any batteries to play, it’s good old-fashioned detective work and brain power. And there are certainly no screens involved.
An excellent way to enjoy the puzzles of an escape room with the kids in your own home, and without the expense of visiting a real-life escape room.
Rating: 5/5
RRP: £27.99
For more information, visit www.johnadams.co.uk. Available to buy from Amazon here.
