At home escape room packs are extremely popular and we love playing them. They are perfect for game nights and parties. The Trapped series of escape room game packs are family-friendly escape rooms in a box with varying degrees of difficulty and take between 1-2 hours to solve. The first game in the series is called The Art Heist, and that’s where we started playing this series of games.
There are two series of the Trapped at home escape rooms in a box. The first game in the series is The Art Heist (Series 1, Room 1). The Art Heist has a puzzle difficulty rating of medium. In the box there are all the clues and components needed to turn any room in your house into an Escape Room. Players need to work together to solve all the puzzles resulting in stealing the painting and escaping the room.
In the box:
- Instructions
- Clue Reader
- Posters
- Clues
- Props
- Solutions
In The Art Heist, the obscenely-rich Harrington family invites you to an exhibition of their priceless art. Upset that his family hoards wealth, their youngest son, Charles, asks your party to steal a painting! Fearing detection, Charles leaves only a series of clues to help you find the right artwork. But you’re not alone! Charles has also convinced one of the staff to help you escape… Can you find the painting, steal it and flee the scene, all in 60 minutes?
The Art Heist is an interactive puzzle-solving game for children and families. Everybody plays together, there is no board or turn-taking, players must try to solve all the clues to escape as a team. It has real codes to crack, puzzles to solve and tests to pass. An ideal party game escape room in a box.
I really liked how the game is packaged, in a bag-like box. There is very little plastic used, with the components being mostly card and paper. The box contains an instruction sheet which tells a story to set the scene, along with multiple cards and clues to solve, a clue reader to help decipher clues as you go along and even little props and posters to really help make you part of the game. The only extras you need to supply are pens, paper and, of course, the players.
Trapped Escape Room Game Packs turn any room in your house into an escape room. This means you are not just sitting around a table trying to solve a series of clues. Clues, puzzles and posters are placed around the room so players can wander around to any puzzle they want to. This does mean that each game will take the adults about 5-10 minutes to set up the room, but it really makes you feel a part of the puzzle and adds a real physical element to the game too. Being on your feet and walking round the room trying to hunt for clues or to match clues together makes the whole experience far more like a real escape room rather than sitting round the kitchen table would (and gets everybody involved more).
Setting up the game to play really is simple and only takes around 10 minutes. The instructions are very clear, easy to follow and explain what do very well. The clues and puzzles are placed around the room, there is nothing that will make a mess or have players riffling through drawers or cupboards. We turned our kitchen into the escape room playing area, and for the most part, the instructions just told us to pop clues on surfaces or stick them to walls – it’s your choice whether to affix them to surfaces or just place them on something.
The concept of the game is simple, solve the clues and puzzles to become a thief and steal a painting, and then escape the room. The Art Heist is a medium difficulty puzzle but to be honest, at first, we all struggled with it. Whilst the clues don’t need to be solved in a specific order, for the first fifteen minutes or so the clues didn’t seem to make any coherent sense and didn’t seem to relate to anything (even when we solved some). There just seemed to be a lack of direction or maybe we were missing something blindingly obvious. We had to resort to the hints to get us on our way and get us into the game. We did finish the game, but we wanted to know where we had gone wrong and after re-reading all the clues along with the hints, we were still a bit baffled as to where some of the solutions came from and we felt it really was just a bit too abstract, or somehow we missed something at the beginning and it followed through the whole game.
Overall, the idea of the game is fantastic. It is simple to set up and the idea of how to play is easy to understand, we just found the clues and puzzles a bit too heavy and abstract for children to solve and as adults we struggled (although we did get there within the time).
The concept of the game, working as a team to solve the puzzles, is excellent. Setting clues around the room works really well making it a much more immersive and interactive experience, and it does get all players involved a lot more (we felt that weaker players wouldn’t get involved as much if everybody was just sat around a table, preferring to let others do the work).
I love at home escape rooms, and the idea of The Art Heist is excellent, it just didn’t live up to its billing. I felt the clues were too obscure or we misunderstood something from the start and never really recovered, making the game not as enjoyable as it could have been.
A plus point for the game is that when you have solved it, it is not a throwaway game. Once you have solved it, you are not going to play again as the answers and solutions aren’t any different or going to give a different outcome, it can be re-packaged and given to someone else to play and to try and solve. As a concept I think that is brilliant, reducing waste and extending the playability. And who knows, other players may not have the same initial struggles as we did.
As a game, I would rate it 3/5 – the idea is great, the components are good, and the re-gifting (albeit clearly used) is a good idea but we just found the puzzles that bit too obtuse to get the most enjoyment out of the game.
Rating: 3/5
RRP: £13.99
Available to buy from Amazon here.
