Escape Rooms games are lots of fun, especially when you can do them from the comfort of your own home with the kids. Trapped do a series of at home escape room game packs that are family-friendly with varying degrees of difficulty. They take between 1-2 hours to play and solve. After playing games 1 and 2 from the first series, we carried on with the third and final game of series 1, The Carnival.
There are two series of the Trapped at home escape rooms in a box. We have been playing the games from series 1 and have just finished The Carnival. It has a puzzle difficulty rating of easy. 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, or go head-to-head, in a race to solve all the puzzles to win a job at the mysterious Muggins Carnival.
In the box:
- Instructions
- Clue Reader
- Posters
- Clues
- Props
- Solutions
The Carnival is an interactive puzzle-solving game for children and families. You can play together or go head-to-head with family and friends. There is no board and no turn-taking, players must try to solve all the clues to win the prize of a job with Muggins Carnival. It has real codes to crack, puzzles to solve and tests to pass. An ideal party game escape room in a box.
In Carnival, your lifelong dream is to work among the jaw-dropping performers of Muggins Carnival, but wait, nothing is what it seems as you race to solve the Ringmaster’s baffling puzzles. Work together as a team or go head-to-head with other players to see who’ll be crowned King or Queen of the carnival.
As with the other games in the series, I really liked how the game is packaged up in a box that looks like a gift bag. Very little plastic is used at all with the components being 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.
To play and immerse the players in the game, the clues and puzzles are placed around the carnival, sorry I mean the room that has become your carnival for the duration of the game. Players must work together in groups or race head-to-head to try and solve the clues and puzzles, not necessarily in any order. This works great as if you are struggling you can go off and work on another clue and come back later (this eliminates a lot of frustration, especially in younger less patient players). We played in groups, a child and adult on each team. The clues were so engaging and fun, and the carnival theme was brightly coloured and engrossing, we all had a great time.
If you do get stuck and are faltering on any clues, there are hint reference numbers on the reverse of the clues which allow you to look for individual clues through a cipher. We thought this was a great way of doing it as it is impossible to accidentally see more answers than you wanted to, or even to be tempted to have a sneaky peek!
Overall, The Carnival was a fun and enjoyable game to play. It had some great puzzles to solve and whilst easier than the previous two in the series it was still just as much fun, and the kids were able to help solve clues more confidently than the previous games. Whilst this is the third room in the series, if playing with children this would be the one to start with as it is the easiest and flows very well. I don’t know why the games weren’t released in the order of easy, medium and hard rather than medium, hard and easy.
As with the previous game, it can be packed away back into its gift bag style and re-gifted for someone else to play, extending its game life. I like that it is not a one use game, a throwaway game, even if it can’t be played again by the same people.
The Carnival is an excellent escape room game for kids and families, where logic and thinking out of the box are put to the test. A fun and entertaining game for family nights or even children’s parties.
Rating: 5/5
RRP: £13.99
Available to buy from Amazon here.
