Write2Ignite

REVIEW

 Escape From Sin’s Curse by Erin Greneaux is an “escape room in a box” card game. You play as part of a team of scientists living in the year 2911. The world around you is desolate spiritually and physically. You and your team are trying to figure out how the world got this way and what went wrong. 

While looking through an ancient library you find a Bible, a book that had been lost for centuries. After reading the account of Adam and Eve, you and your team decide to travel in a time machine to stop Eve from eating the forbidden fruit and laying a curse upon all mankind.  

But you arrive too late, and you find yourself on a fact-finding mission to discover if there is any way to reverse sin’s curse. 

I have never gone to a real-life escape room and paid to solve puzzles and riddles in order to get out, but I have played numerous games designed to give you the escape room experience at your own kitchen table.

Though escape room games tend to require more imagination and are on a much smaller scale than the real thing, I like that I don’t have to leave my house to play them. They make for great group activities, and do not take much preparation to play. 

Escape room games have a plot (I love a good story!) and usually you and the other players work as a team to escape. It does not require competition to win, but rather co-operation. In the games’ storylines, you are typically trapped, lost, or tricked into a situation where you have to find and solve clues and puzzles in order to escape. These games require a range of different problem solving skills, making them fun for players with differing levels of ability. Your goal is to beat the game, not each other. 

I liked the gospel message that this game clearly presented. The timeline of the plot covers from Adam and Eve to the Resurrection. The game materials were high quality and, unlike the other escape games where you end up cutting and scribbling on much of the game materials, you can use this game again and again. We did have to cut two of the cards, but you could easily tape them back in place for the next set of players to use.

My only previous escape game experience was with the “Exit, The Game” series by Kosmos.  So, learning this game’s different set-up was a bit difficult for me.  Instead of following a booklet that takes you from riddle to riddle, this game was on cards and the order of operations was sometimes hard to figure out.

It may have been easier for me had I never played a different type of escape game before. I kept trying to use the techniques I had learned from playing the Exit-game series, which didn’t apply to this game’s unique set-up. However, I think someone with previous experience in escape games as well as someone with no prior experience could figure out how to play this game and enjoy it.

I would have appreciated having all the puzzle and riddle “solutions” available in the actual rulebook instead of online on the game’s site. Sometimes the online solutions didn’t provide enough information. The game really wants you to figure it out by yourself, but I really would have appreciated help to get past the first solution in order to figure out how the game works. 

RECOMMENDATION

The game suggests 1-6 players, ages 10+, with an estimated game time of 60-90 minutes. 

I recommend four players max, as any more could lead to a crowded game table and someone getting left out of the action. I believe a ten-year-old could play the game, but with an adult’s help as some of the puzzles are multifaceted and more complex. The time estimate is very accurate.  The game took my older sister and me an hour and a half. Games like this can sometimes take up to two hours, so be sure you have plenty of time to play from start to finish. 

I would recommend this game for people who have patience and enjoy a good puzzle. I think that different people will have their own unique experience with this game, and that you can’t really know how you will do with it unless you try it for yourself. 

Some of my escape-room game experiences were better than others, this one was a bit more perplexing and difficult, but I had fun overall and enjoyed the message and plot of the game. 

Hadassah Murdock is a nineteen-year-old homeschooled senior high student from South Carolina. When she’s not busy working on her family’s farm, she loves creating stories, thrift shopping, fairy-gardening, cooking, and creating art for her sketchbook. She has played many Exit games and loves good mysteries, though biographies remain her favorite type of reading.