Mattel Games Escape Room in a Box: Flashback, Escape Room Game with 19 Puzzles and 4 Locks, Can Pair with Amazon Alexa, for Adults and Teens 13 Years Old and Up

My family LOVES escape rooms and we've played a few at-home rooms too. This one is the only at-home escape room we've tried that successfully emulates the FEELING of being in an escape room. The Echo app, while glitchy (don't tell her you won, or it'll reset your time and you'll have to go another 90 minutes before being able to exit the app!), did add some really great thematic music as well as time checks. You get a winner (or loss) message when the timer runs out.I usually hate any puzzle with a lock, but these were better varied than simply searching for numbers. The locks also worked well and were not frustrating to open or read the numbers on. The theme was fun and family-friendly, but still intense enough to be fun for adults. The writing is good and has personality ("werewolfery is totes not as awesomesauce as expected") and you'll care about the characters by the end!The puzzles, most importantly, were also varied- some were physical, some were mental, some were just riddles, etc. You can reprint the paper components (you WILL write on them!) to do it again or send on to a friend, which I highly recommend. The puzzles were quite challenging. Despite the fact that we are fairly seasoned escape room goers, we DID use all our hints (use EVERYTHING in the box- there may be some surprises!) I do not recommend this for beginners, unless you choose to extend your time limit. Since there is no in-person game master, you are more than free to do so!We absolutely loved this and will almost definitely buy the rest in the series. We played this during the 2020 lockdown and it made us forget about everything else for 90 minutes. That's a reason enough in itself to recommend it!

I played this game with my 10-year old son one evening and we had a BLAST!!! We had so much fun discovering all of the pieces and parts involved, figuring out the clues and opening the locks. The three paths can be played simultaneously, according to the instructions, but we chose to play each color path separately, one at a time. The first path took us the longest but then we understood better how the game worked and made it through all three paths to the final solution, only going past our time limit by one minute! Lots of laughs and "a-HA" moments. I think this would be challenging for any child younger than 10, but my son seemed to enjoy it and he even solved a few of the puzzles on his own! Two people can definitely play this game, but it might be fun to have a crowd of folks all working on it together. I am a HUGE fan of escape rooms, and this game was a really creative and fun way to be able to play that type of experience in the comfort of our own home. Planning to purchase the Werewolf version next!!!

My staff is tired of the 'build a tower with toothpicks and marshmallows' kind of team-building so I thought I would give this a try. We had an office retreat yesterday and this was part of our day and potentially the best part. We really enjoyed diving into the puzzles and figuring out the clues. Overall I thought it was well done and not too hard (though we did have to look at the hints a few times). We had 3 teams with 2 people on each team, one team per track, and it took almost the entire 90 minutes to do which was perfect. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars was because the locks are a bit cheap and one appears to not want to re-lock.

My 13-year-old daughter is not into games, but we convinced her to play this with us one night after dinner. There are three “paths” and it took us exactly 90 minutes to navigate all three as a team of three. We found it challenging and clever enough without feeling impossible. The next morning my husband was still remarking that it was surprisingly fun. But you do basically throw the whole game away when you’re done, which feels wasteful. I think it’s impossible to even give this away after you’re done with it.

This escape room was super fun. We did a group of 6 people. In the instructions it says you can do it three different ways or in teams but really it’s a group effort. The three “paths” won’t get you the find answer individually. They all have to be completed to complete the escape. The challenges ranged in difficulty from super easy to incredibly hard. I loved that some of the tasks were worded in a way that made you think outside the box. Overall a fun game, just don’t expect to be able to play it three ways as it says.

I played this on a weekend with my wife and my 6 year old daughter. I have played a couple of real life escape room games and am a life-long puzzle addict. Having prior knowledge helps but is not required. I thought this game set great atmosphere and had a family fun theme. The directions were clear. It took us the 1.5 hours to complete but we were solving one puzzle at a time and no hints. I will state they're is and arbitrarily subjective part of the end puzzle, but we were able to solve it. I loved that final solutions pulled from all 3 sections of the game. I do wish I knew beforehand that the Flashback story was a follow up to the Werewolf Experiment, as I would have liked to play them in order for story sake. For the price I don't think you can go wrong with this experience. Icing on the cake is you can print new pieces and replay again or pay it forward to another group.

GREAT GAME! My boyfriend and I (both in our 30's) played the Werewolf version first. It was perfectly difficult that I was dying to try this version.Bottom line: I found this version to be EASIER than the werewolf version so if you're new to these games, try this one first and the werewolf second.Pros: LOTS of puzzles to get through. It was hard to overlook a clue because so many puzzles walked you through were all the clues were.Con: it didn't take a ton of mental power. I found the puzzles were basic and just time consuming to do (which is just as fun) and the really tough ones I found I did not have to touch because it was easy to see where they led you.For a 90 minute game, we succeeded in 60 minutes. For the werewolf version, we didn't beat the hour and loved every part of it. For $20 it was a fun date night in.