Escape Puzzle the Circle: Rome - Find the Rune of Ambeth! | Review

Unusual puzzle pieces, new name, turntable and the circle: the Escape Puzzle The Circle – Rome belongs to a new generation of Escape Puzzles and takes us on a magical mission to the eternal city of Rome. How big is the fun factor in puzzling and riddling, what is new and how good is it?

Not only does the wolf from the puzzle stare at me in bewilderment, but I also stare at the puzzle… Because this escape puzzle is completely different from the escape puzzles I’ve been used to. There are more pieces, which can also be rounded, some twice as big as others. And a turntable is now included. The circle is guaranteed to play an important role in this puzzle concept – not only the name suggests that, but also the shape of the pieces.

What is my expectation? A nice puzzle for 5-8 hours of enjoyable puzzle fun and hopefully some nice, crunchy but still solvable puzzles with a nice overall solution as a finale. So much in advance: it turns out quite differently than expected!

The Escape Puzzles From Ravensburger and the New Concept in the Escape Puzzle the Circle: Rome

First put the Puzzle Escape Room together, then find the puzzles and solve the mission.

Up to now, the Escape Puzzles from Ravensburger were mainly jigsaw puzzles with 759 pieces and as a nice add-on, so to speak, the puzzles and the occupation with the motif were added. The escape puzzles with 368 pieces are an exception here, as they contain more puzzles and the puzzle time is shortened. The level of difficulty both in putting the motif together and in puzzling varies in the more than a dozen Escape Puzzles that have appeared so far. There was always a storyline, but to be honest it was secondary and usually found a very nice ending in the final solution. Each escape puzzle was a new challenge in itself.

You can also find my reviews of these escape puzzles on Abenteuer Freundschaft:

• Escape Puzzle Space Observatory
• Escape Puzzle Witch’s Kitchen
• Escape Puzzle Angkor Wat
• Escape Puzzle Dragon Laboratory
• Escape Puzzle Forbidden Basement
• Escape Puzzle Greenhouse

What Is Special and New About the Escape Puzzle the Circle: Rome?

What’s new are the curves and circles: not only do they appear as a motif on the puzzle, but the pieces are also rounded and some together actually form a circle. So already the shape of the puzzle pieces is special and novel in this Escape Puzzle. The puzzle also consists of 919 pieces – more than previous editions. It is also recommended for ages 14 and up, so it promises to be quite something.

No sooner has the puzzle been put together than the turntable becomes interesting. The task is to find and solve the 6 puzzles in the motif and set the code on the turntable. All the solutions together then add up to a total solution.

The highlight: There are two more The Circle puzzles (Escape Puzzle The Circle: Paris and Escape Puzzle The Circle: London). The solutions of these three Escape Puzzles can be combined into one total solution. As soon as I have solved all three puzzles, you will find out whether this addition is really worthwhile.

Note: Ravensburger kindly sent us a review copy of the Escape Puzzle The Circle: Rome. As always, however, this review is unpaid and reflects our honest opinion.

The Escape Puzzle the Circle: Rome at a Glance

• Game type: Puzzle, puzzle game, home escape game, adult puzzle, family game
• Age: from 14 years
• Players: from 1 player
• Duration: approx. 14-16 hours
• Publisher: Ravensburger Spieleverlag
• Playwright: Johannes Schiller
• Publication year: 2022
• Game objective: Assemble the magical motif with an Italian villa into an Escape Room, search for and solve the puzzles hidden inside and, as the final solution, find the solution pieces in the puzzle and assemble them into a rune.

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Escape Puzzle the Circle: Find the Hidden Symbol of the Moon Mother Ambeth

Playing Material

The square puzzle box contains 919 puzzle pieces, an instruction booklet with the story and a compact explanation of the game as well as a QR code to the website, where you can listen to or read the 10-minute story as an audio play. There you will also find hints and solutions when things go wrong. As usual, there is a sealed envelope in the box, which contains the final solution and is only opened at the very end. The puzzle measures about 64 x 50 cm and the puzzle pieces are partly round, some twice as big as others and unusually shaped.

The puzzle pieces are made in the usual very good quality by Ravensburger.

Important: The story is only online on the website (see link above) and is not in the manual. So you should definitely go to the website!

The Story

We are on holiday in the magical green hills of ancient trees in Ireland. A strange atmosphere prevails here, as if we are being watched. That’s when we meet the little leprechaun Andjar sitting on a stone – oops, we can see him! We learn that this is because the protective crystal Envir has lost its power. This crystal is responsible for maintaining the protective barrier between the magical and real worlds and protecting them.

The crystal Envir can only restore the protective wall by reuniting the three elemental crystals Sulis, Litha and Amind of the 3 World Mothers. They are guarded in secret places by three guardians who only give them out to someone who proves worthy of them.

Logically, we offer to fetch the crystals. The goblin then gives us an object that looks like a telescope. We look through it and see the interior of an ancient Italian villa.

The Mission

Find the rune of Ambeth, the moon mother. Use it to convince the fierce-looking Guardian Wolf to give you the gem.

The Puzzle Escape Room in Rome

The puzzle motif consists of a green, The puzzle motif consists of a green, lush forest landscape, in the middle of which is the interior of an Italian villa in the form of a circle as a view through the goblin’s telescope. The Escape Room thus consists of the inside of the circle. The guardian wolf stands grimly on a pillar. Around his neck hangs the green gemstone we are striving for. Already when putting the puzzle together, one notices a few symbols and signs that certainly belong to the puzzles to be solved. the motif differs in some small details from the motif on the cover of the puzzle box – the puzzles are of course not yet spoiled there.

Difficulty Level of the Escape Puzzle the Circle: Rome

The first big surprise awaits me when I start doing the puzzle: this motif is challenging to puzzle and it takes much longer than expected until the last piece is in place. This is not primarily due to the +160 puzzle pieces. The pieces are small, some unusually shaped with the curves, some very large, others small and the colour tones consist of either browns or greens. In fact, I used the cover to help me and was therefore quite grateful – totally unusual for me. For comparison: so far I have spent a maximum of 6 hours on an Escape Puzzle – with the Escape Puzzle The Circle: Rome I spent about 14 hours on the puzzle !

The 6 puzzles consist of 6 conspicuous things (that’s how I put it), you first have to look for these and recognise how the puzzle works in order to find the solution, then set the turntable to find out the final solution coordinates. After solving the 6 small puzzles, you get to the final solution. Oha! Quite challenging the first time you do it. But in fact you soon get the hang of it if you follow the description in the instructions. Except for one, the puzzles were simple and easy for the two of us to solve in 30 minutes.

The 6 Puzzles, the Turntable and the Way to the Solution

The task is to find a total of 6 puzzles and write down the solutions that the turntable spits out, preferably with the help of pen and paper. The solutions are symbols, numbers, letters and colours. To find the puzzles, it is important to look out for deviations from the motif on the cover – and they can be tiny. We solved the escape puzzle The Circle: Rome as a team of two and have already played 7 escape puzzles and a lot of other escape games at home, so we have a lot of experience. We immediately identified all 6 puzzles in the motif and solved 5 of them quickly – they are familiar puzzle types for which you don’t have to think around corners. The fifth puzzle kept us quite busy and we needed a hint to find the solution.You check the solutions with the turntable. What is really nice is that the circular centre is taken out of the puzzle and replaced by the turntable. If you now set the correct solution, you still need coordinates on the edge of the puzzle that lead to the solution and finally to the final solution. This sounds cryptic, but it becomes clear when you follow the steps in the instructions with the rotating disc used in the puzzle.

Ravensburger has rated the difficulty of the puzzles as 3 out of 5, i.e. not very tricky. Considering that this escape puzzle is clearly aimed at adults and teenagers over 14, I think this rating is correct.

Hints and the Solution

If you get stuck, you can get staggered tips on the solutions website. The concept with several small help points also exists in the previous escape puzzles and it is really well done. This way you can get a little hint before you get frustrated because you get stuck and the puzzle fun is not dampened. But you can also get the final solution there.

As always, the solution envelope contains the final solution to the mission. So you should really only open it when you think you have found the rune of the moon mother and want to check the result. Personally, I really like the final solutions of the escape puzzles – the solution here rounds off the mission nicely for me.

Evaluation and Conclusion

Challenging puzzles, then puzzling and solving the mission in the Puzzle Escape Room – that’s what we know from the Escape Puzzles by Ravensburger. A new feature of the Escape Puzzle The Circle: Rome is the decoding turntable integrated into the puzzle, which helps you find a part of the final mission solution with each puzzle solution. In this escape puzzle, you spend a lot of the time doing the puzzle (about 14 hours), the puzzle solving afterwards (takes only about 30 minutes) and is a nice extra. The motif is beautiful, the work is of the usual high quality and there is an overarching story with a mission for the three previous The Circle puzzles Rome, Paris and London, which – if you have puzzled and unravelled all three – finally concludes The Circle puzzle trilogy.

Rating

The Escape Puzzle The Circle: Rome and the Mission

The puzzle pieces are of high quality and you can play this escape puzzle many times without wearing it out. Since no pieces are used up, you can also easily lend it to friends or puzzle and play again after some time.

The story is not that important overall, it serves as an introduction to the mission and connects The Circle trilogy with each other. For frequent players or escape puzzlers, it is definitely a nice reward that after playing all three missions, you are allowed to solve one final mission and need all three puzzles for this. But even without this trilogy finale, each The Circle escape puzzle has a self-contained finale with a haptic solution that is not totally surprising, but fully satisfying.

Is the Puzzle Fun?

If you like doing puzzles and spending evenings putting together a beautiful motif, you will have great fun. You shouldn’t watch the clock, as with the Escape Puzzle The Lighthouse from Kosmos, for example. Because with the Escape Puzzle The Circle: Rome Goes, a large part of the fun is in the pleasurable puzzling of a challenging motif. It is important to be clear: this escape puzzle cannot be completed in one evening – plan more time in a relaxed way! The motif is really fun and the additional challenge of the round, sometimes large, sometimes small pieces and similar colours are great for advanced players.

Is the Puzzling Fun in Escape Puzzle the Circle: Rome?

We already have a lot of Escape Game and Escape Puzzle experience and have experienced a lot of different types of puzzles, moments of frustration and inspiring flashes of inspiration while puzzling. The puzzles themselves were immediately discovered in the puzzle – here you definitely have an advantage if you already have experience. 5 of the 6 puzzles are logical and easy to solve without having to think around corners. We definitely had fun and found the puzzles nice. We would not have been able to solve the 6th puzzle without a hint. We also got on well with the decoding disc and found it a good renewal (it does not exist in the previous escape puzzles) to find the final solutions.

As is so often the case with exit games, the fun depends on whether you find an approach to the tasks or puzzles. If you succeed, thumbs up! The alternative is rather frustration, because the Huhs?< /em> and < em>What now? really spoil the puzzle fun. In this escape puzzle, however, the puzzles are definitely suitable for beginners and you can solve them easily without many hints! The staggered hint tidbits, which you can get online if you get stuck, are well solved and can be called up quickly via QR code on your smartphone.

For whom is the Escape Puzzle The Circle: Rome worthwhile?

With the Exit Puzzle The Circle: Rome, everyone who likes to sit for longer on a nice challenging puzzle and then puzzle for a short time will get their money’s worth. For experienced exit puzzlers, The Circle Trilogy is a nice extension with more challenging puzzles with more pieces, with which you can spend much longer. Even beginners who enjoy puzzling will find the logical, entertaining 6 puzzles easy to solve. The puzzles themselves can easily be solved as a family with children – the puzzle, on the other hand, requires stamina and patience.

You should plan at least 14 hours of puzzle time for this escape puzzle – it cannot be played in one evening and is therefore not suitable for a games evening!

For the list price of € 18.99 (at amazon*, however, also from € 13.99 depending on the promotion) you get a nice puzzle with nice puzzles and mission at a fair price.

Conclusion

A challenging puzzle with easily solvable 6 puzzles as the completed part of an Escape Puzzle trilogy. Special are the new rounded and more challenging to puzzle parts as well as the decoding disc, which increase the demand and the fun of the game and are a good innovation. As icing on the cake for fans, the solution of this The Circle part can be combined with the solutions of the other two parts of the trilogy for a final overall mission exit. Nice addition to the Escape Puzzle range with a challenging puzzle with mostly easy puzzles!

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