Escape Puzzle Greenhouse – Unmask the Culprit | Review

Puzzling with a mission and puzzles that have it all. Something is rotten in the Escape Puzzle Greenhouse, and it’s not the cucumbers! While searching for clues in the greenery puzzled together, you’ll stumble across lots of puzzles that will keep the grey cells on their toes!

In this greenhouse, it really looks like cabbage and turnips. Wherever you look around, you notice strange things. A queasy feeling creeps over you, because not only are the plants not doing well here, something is terribly wrong. Have you got tomatoes in your eyes or why do you think there are more puzzles hidden in the Puzzle Escape Room than you were used to?

The Escape Puzzle Greenhouse is different from all the previous Escape Puzzles I have solved: this time it should take you about as long to do the puzzle as it does to solve it! Until now, Ravensburger’s Escape Puzzles were primarily puzzles, with a little puzzle fun thrown in for good measure. But this Escape Puzzle Greenhouse now contains a whole 18 puzzles that also culminate in a final solution! Ravensburger also classifies the difficulty of these puzzles as super challenging at 5/5. That alone made us immensely curious to see how many grey hairs we, as advanced Exit players, would grow while solving the puzzles… 🙂

Ravensburger Escape Puzzles

Fewer puzzle pieces but more puzzles are in the Escape Puzzle Greenhouse

With its Escape Puzzle series, the games publisher Ravensburger has landed a great success. So far, more than a dozen of this combination of home escape game and puzzle have been published for adults and children in various difficulty levels since 2018. Each Escape Puzzle consists of a story with a mission and puzzles. After completing the puzzle, each time you have to find your way out of the room depicted on the puzzle.

The Escape Puzzle Greenhouse is already my 6th Escape Puzzle or the 7th if you include the Exit Game + Puzzle in the Lonely Lighthouse from Kosmos Publishing. So I can say from experience that the puzzles vary in difficulty to put together and the difficulty level of the puzzles also differs. Each Escape Puzzle is definitely a new challenge. On Abenteuer Freundschaft you can also find my reviews of the Escape Puzzle Space Observatory, the Escape Puzzle Witch’s Kitchen, the Escape Puzzle Temple, the Exit Puzzle Dragon Laboratory as well as the Escape Puzzle Forbidden Basement.

Note: Ravensburger kindly sent us a review copy of the Escape Puzzle Greenhouse. However, this review is unpaid and reflects our honest opinion.

The Escape Puzzle Greenhouse at a Glance

• Game type: Puzzle, Riddle game, Escape game for home, Adult puzzle, Family game
• Age: from 12 years
• Players: from 1 player
• Duration: approx. 2 – 4 hours
• Publisher: Ravensburger Game Publishing
• Game author: Johannes Schiller
• Year of publication: 2020
• Objective: Puzzle the greenhouse into an Escape Room and then solve 18 puzzles to find out what is wrong in the greenhouse.

Angebot

Ravensburger EXIT Puzzle 16483 Im Gewächshaus 368 Teile

Ravensburger Puzzle meets Exit Room: Puzzeln - Rätseln - Lösen

13,77 EUR

Escape Puzzle Greenhouse – Unravel the Mystery

There are 18 puzzles hidden in this Escape Puzzle

Game Material

The game box contains 368 puzzle pieces, the instructions with story and mission as well as QR code. When scanned with a smartphone, the QR code leads to the App with tips and solutions. Also included is a sealed envelope containing the final solution. The puzzle measures 70 cm x 50 cm and the puzzle pieces are significantly larger than in the Escape puzzles with 759 pieces.

The Escape Puzzle Greenhouse – the Escape Room

The puzzle motif is the greenhouse of our Aunt Ute, who clearly has a green thumb. Colourful orchids bloom on the walls, flower beds, clay pots and baskets full of vegetables and herbs are everywhere. In the middle is a table with a wild jumble of gardening utensils. Immediately, some strange details catch our eye as trained observers when we put the puzzle together – surely they belong to puzzles!

Because the puzzle motif differs from the motif on the cover of the game box. However, this does not make the puzzle really challenging. Because the 368 pieces are large, the variety of colours is quite large and thus the puzzle is put together relatively quickly. While we spent 5-6 hours on some of Ravensburger’s escape puzzles (especially the temple), I finished it on my own in 1 hour.

Finding the puzzles was easy for us this time and we solved the 18 puzzles in total in about 1 hour. However, newcomers to this type of brainteaser should rather plan for 2 hours.

The story: In Aunt Ute’s greenhouse, the plants suddenly stop growing and all the vegetables have gone bad. Who is the culprit? Maybe the neighbour with a penchant for black magic. At least that’s what Ute thinks!

The mission: Uncover the cause of the mysterious spell and free the plants from it!

The 18 Riddles

Logic puzzles with a bit of arithmetic – those who love such puzzles will get their money’s worth

There are many little puzzles hidden in the hullabaloo of the greenhouse. If you focus on the differences between the cover and the puzzle, they are easy to find.They are disguised as symbols, signs, numbers, letters etc..

So it is important to examine the motif of the Escape Puzzle Greenhouse closely, to scrutinise deviations and discover patterns. Be sure to have a notepad and pen ready for the solution path and to write down the solutions.

With the exception of two puzzles, we found almost all of the puzzles easy to solve and not that complex, because one must not forget: Ravensburger has marked the puzzle difficulty as very demanding (5/5) and accordingly, beginners should not expect to solve all of them easily without tips. Thanks to our previous experience, we easily solved all but two of the puzzles without assistance. The majority of the puzzles are logic puzzles and you should have an interest in simple mathematical puzzles. For twelve-year-olds, however, the puzzles are very challenging.

If you do get stuck, it’s best to look at the app with the solution tips before frustration sets in. They are staggered, so you are always given a small morsel to help you progress and not the entire solution straight away.

The sealed envelope contains the final solution, which rounds off the experience nicely, as is usual with Ravensburger’s Escape Puzzles.

Rating and Conclusion

The white envelope contains the total solution

More puzzles, less puzzling than the Escape Puzzles with around twice as many pieces. The Escape Puzzle Greenhouse is aimed at advanced Exit Game players who want to do shorter puzzles and more puzzles. The beautifully detailed motif comes in the usual Ravensburger quality and is reminiscent of a hidden object picture. Through the puzzling, one deals with the motif in detail. The story takes a back seat to the puzzles and riddles and is more of an accessory. The “Exit” of this Escape Game is a nice ending for the mission, although not as sophisticated as some other Escape Puzzles.

Rating

Pro and Con

The greenhouse is designed with attention to detail and is not difficult to puzzle. The larger pieces and different colours make it possible to puzzle the Escape Puzzle in one evening and then solve puzzles. This way, even inexperienced or impatient puzzlers will not get frustrated. The puzzle pieces are of high quality and can be puzzled many times without wearing out. Since the Escape Puzzle does not use up any items like the Exit games, you can put the puzzle together more often or lend it to friends.

As with all Escape Puzzles, the story is not that important and only the introduction to the mission. But the final solution is conclusive and rounds off the story.That’s why the Escape Puzzle greenhouse comes up with the most puzzles, most of which are logic puzzles for which you have to know simple mathematics. For inexperienced Exit Game players, the puzzles are certainly challenging and it is difficult to find the solutions if it is the first Escape Puzzle that is put on the table. However, if you have already played several escape puzzles, you will be familiar with such logic puzzles and the way they appear in the puzzle, and you can solve this exit room without any problems or tips.

In retrospect, we were annoyed that we got a hint too quickly for the two puzzles we were stuck on, because we would have found the clue and the solution ourselves with a little more thought. But maybe practice makes perfect (and thanks to Corona we had a lot of practice here…) and we have meanwhile outdone our initial puzzle-blindness :-). We still like the 4-5 step instructions in the app, because you can pick up a hint before frustration sets in. The final solution was not so surprising, but it was coherent for us.

You get a nice puzzle with many riddles at a fair price, where the time you need for puzzling and riddling is roughly balanced. However, the puzzles do not come close to the complex versatile puzzles by Inka and Markus Brand of EXIT Spiele.

For Whom Is the Escape Puzzle Greenhouse Worthwhile?

Anyone who enjoys the occasional puzzle but is at least as fond of riddles will get their money’s worth with this escape puzzle. Experienced Escape Game players should have no difficulty with the puzzles. I would, however, advise newcomers to the world of exit games and puzzles to try the Escape Puzzle Witch’s Kitchen, Forbidden Basement or Space Observatory.For families with children who are keen on maths and brain games, it is a nice game to spend together on an occasion or holiday and play something that challenges everyone. The Escape Puzzle Greenhouse can be played by several people in one evening.

Conclusion

Challenging puzzles in the Escape Puzzle room that can be puzzled in an hour. This escape puzzle is completely playable in one evening and consists of about 50% puzzling and 50% puzzle solving in terms of time. The puzzles are logic puzzles and their solutions culminate in the finale of the mission.

Angebot

Ravensburger EXIT Puzzle 16484 In der Spielzeugfabrik 368 Teile

11,72 EUR

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11,19 EUR

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11,99 EUR

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Ravensburger EXIT Puzzle 19950 Sternwarte 759 Teile

11,99 EUR

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