Exit the Abandoned Cabin – Solve Riddles to Escape | Review

A broken down car forces you to seek shelter in an abandoned cabin. But the next day you are locked in and have to puzzle your way to freedom! How good is the prize-winning agventure Exit The Abandoned Cabin?

We love Escape Games and we love board games for the home, but we had never played a mixture of both. It’s high time we did and now we know what the pros and cons are!

“Exit – The Game” is a series of games by Kosmos Verlag specialising in Escape Games for the home. When choosing our first exit game in this series, we boldly chose a scenario “for advanced players”: Exit The abandoned cabin.

After all, we are experienced escape gamers and puzzle professionals. Or not…?

A small note: Kosmos-Verlag was kind enough to send us a free copy Exit the abandoned cabin for review. However, our review and especially the rating is unpaid and reflects our own independent opinion.

Exit The Abandoned Cabin at a Glance

• Game type: Mind game, connoisseur game
• Age: from 12 years
• Players: 1 – 4 players
• Duration: approx. 45 – 90 minutes (according to the pack… our estimate is rather: 60 -120 min. ?)
• Publisher: Kosmos
• Game author: Inka & Markus Brand
• Year of publication: 2017
• Prizes: German Prize Connoisseur Game of the Year 2017
• Game objective: Find the exit from the titular hut by solving puzzles in as little time as possible and with as few hints as possible.

Angebot

Kosmos 692681 EXIT - Das Spiel - Die verlassene Hütte, Level: Fortgeschrittene, Escape Room-Spiel, für 1 bis 4 Personen ab 12 Jahre, einmaliges Event-Spiel, spannendes Gesellschaftsspiel, Einzelspiel

Auszeichnung: Kennerspiel des Jahres 2017; Level: Fortgeschrittene; Partyspiel im praktischen Format: toll auch als Geburtstagsgeschenk oder Mitbringsel

11,99 EUR

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The Scenario

Holiday at last! You’re in the car on the way to your dream holiday home when… PFFFFFFT! CRACK! SQUEEZE! … right: you get a flat tyre.
No mobile network! And for hours you haven’t seen another car on this lonely road at the edge of the forest. And there’s a storm coming up…

Fortunately, one of you is able to spot a hut among the trees. It turns out to be abandoned, but the door is open and it is certainly more comfortable than in the car. You spend the night in this shelter, but the next morning…

… you have a rude awakening! Someone has locked the door from the outside and all the windows have bars, as you only notice in the daylight.

And in the middle of the room lies a mysterious book with the inscription “Welcome, my guests…” and a strange turntable….

Playing Material and Preparation

The book of the creepy host…

One of the special features of an the exit game the abdoned cabin is, of course, that unlike other escape games, the room in which you find yourself and from which you have to escape is only imaginary or painted on.

Therefore, there is no classic game board, but a book, a turntable and various cards. However, players should only take a closer look at all this after the game instructions have been read aloud to all players.

Apart from the materials provided, you only need a pen and paper, scissors and a stopwatch.

The book and turntable are placed in the centre, then the puzzle cards, solution cards and help cards are placed in piles next to them according to the instructions and the Exit the abdoned cabin can begin.

Gameplay

Now all the players are allowed to get their hands on the book, which is full of puzzles. The funny thing is that you can only solve many of the puzzles if you have solved others first. So you first have to find the end of the thread, figuratively speaking, before you unravel it.

There were four of us playing and while we all sat together at one puzzle at the beginning, we split up at some point, as is usual in classic Escape Games.

Since you have to use scissors for some of the 10 puzzles anyway and the Exit The abdoned Cabin game is designed for one-time use, you can literally take the book apart so that you can also look at the puzzles individually or in “work groups”.

The Solution to the Puzzle (Will Not Be Revealed)

The turntable is the key – set correctly…

Common to all puzzles is that each is marked with a certain symbol and that the solution is always a code of 3 digits or 3 colours.

To solve a puzzle, you set this code with the movable dividing discs on the turntable under the matching symbol and a number then appears in a viewing window. Regardless of whether the code was right or wrong, the number indicates one of the solution cards, which you can then draw from the pile and look at.

But even if the code was correct, there is still a hurdle. Now you have to identify on which of the objects in the room the matching puzzle symbol can be found. And this is not always possible immediately, because at the beginning you cannot see all sides of the room and only find the corresponding views in the course of the game.

Only when you have found the right code AND the right object will you be guided to the solution. In this way, you move from puzzle to puzzle and can finally open the door of the hut with the last combination.

Admittedly, it took us a little while to get used to the simple game principle. Hopefully, the next exit game for home will be quicker.

Evaluation and Conclusion

A solution card does not always show the solution!

Rating

If we had the choice, we would probably prefer classic Escape Games that you play on location, simply because the atmosphere draws you much more into the fictional plot and you can interact with real things in a real room.
But: of course, even assuming 4 players, you pay about ten times as much or more! In this respect, exit games for the home are a cost-effective alternative and offer all the advantages of a portable game. You can play it at home at any time. These Exit Rooms are guaranteed barrier-free. And you can also simply take such an exit game with you on holiday (to an abandoned hut, for example ? ).

A basic characteristic of all Escape Games is that they can only be played once. The unique experience character therefore remains with the exit game for home.

Pro and Con of the Exit the Abandoned Cabin

The puzzles challenged us and pleased us. There are noticeably many hours of creative work in here and the stated level “For advanced players” is definitely justified. We needed almost 2 hours and some of the help cards.

As far as the latter are concerned, one of our criticisms is that, unfortunately, with most of the 1st hints you are simply told that you can’t solve this puzzle just yet or that you have to have solved puzzle XY first. Since this is no real help and was sometimes a bit frustrating for us, our suggestion would be not to let such help cards flow negatively into the final evaluation.

Since you can only use the game material once, we found it positive that it consists almost exclusively of paper and cardboard and contains only one tiny piece of plastic.

We definitely spent an enjoyable evening with this exit the abdoned cabin game and it certainly wasn’t our last home Escape game. However, the fun is not comparable to classic Escape Games (which you inevitably do if you know those), where you actually dive into another world and forget time and space.

However, one must emphasise the very good price-performance ratio, for this price a group has terrific puzzle fun as a team!

Conclusion

A cheap and portable alternative to location-based Escape Games with lots of varied puzzles for advanced puzzle fans

Puzzle games are just your thing? Then check out our review of Gangster City! Or click through more tips for a games night or our other ideas for activities with friends.

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