Arpy gee?

7th Sea is apparently an established RPG system. I say apparently because it’s not one I’m familiar with. The description from the 7th Sea website says:

7th Sea is a tabletop roleplaying game of swashbuckling and intrigue, exploration and adventure, taking place on the continent of Théah, a land of magic and mystery.

https://www.chaosium.com/7th-sea/

So while I’ve got no context for the world and the lore of 7th Sea, I can still appreciate the characters and story in the game, and I’ve got to say it’s integrated pretty well into the game.

The game itself is along the lines of games like the Exit and Unlock series. When you open the box you’ll find some small punchboards, a deck of cards, and some sheets. The game is very clear in making sure that you don’t open or read or look at anything before you’re meant to, for thar be spoilers ahoy for the unwary sailor.

Puzzling times

The game itself is a series of puzzles. You’ll collect items (cards) along the way which you may need in later puzzles, so while the game doesn’t take up a huge amount of space, it’s worth making sure you can lay out everything so that it’s all visible. It’s your standard mix of observational, logical, geometric, and lateral thinking puzzles, and it’s at a really nice level. Not so easy as to be boring, while not so difficult that you’ll never finish it without a walkthrough.

I’ll do my best to keep things spoiler-free, but suffice to say there are some really cool things the game makes you do with the box and sheets which means you’ll have to work in all three dimensions to solve some puzzles. This ‘puzzle in a box’ corner of the game market is saturated at the moment, and making a game stand out for any particular reason is a challenge. Sidequest: 7th Sea does a really good job of keeping it fresh feeling by asking me to do things I’ve never had to do before in one of these games.

The main drawbacks I found are more to do with a combination of graphic design and my own personal lighting. The game has a dark feeling that pervades through the narrative and the printing on everything. It’s dark, spooky, and eerie, which means that some of the things you’ll be employing your keen powers of observation on can be pretty hard to pick out. If you wear glasses, you’ll need to be wearing them, and I’d also recommend playing with plenty of light. I tried it out as a cosy little game on the living room coffee table one evening and soon had to turn the main lights on.

Final thoughts

I love a good puzzle game, and Sidequest: 7th Sea is a good puzzle game. I don’t know how much more I’d have gotten out of it if I was familiar with the game’s lore before I started, but I feel certain there are nods to other characters and things from the 7th Sea universe which went right over my head. The puzzles are good fun, and you get that dopamine kick in the brain when one clicks and you figure out how to solve it.

There’s no save system, but like the Exit games, there doesn’t need to be one. It’ll take you a couple of hours to finish the game, and it’s a really enjoyable couple of hours. You could play it on your own (as I did), and I think you’ll definitely get value out of having at least one other pair of eyes looking over things. It makes a great couples game to break the monotony of another night in front of the TV. There’s no reason you’d ever play it through a second time because the story and puzzles are a straight shot, but unlike the Exit games nothing gets altered or destroyed. You can easily put everything back in order and give it to someone else to play.

The most jarring thing for me is the hardest to talk about without dropping some serious spoilers. The game’s finale has a great build-up and the overall flow of the game then suddenly breaks to draw out the conclusion. The puzzles here were much harder and more obscure than the rest of the game, but there are still hints, and you’ll be able to draw on the things you’ve already done, let’s leave it at that. Depending on how well you do in that finale, I can see that it might leave a slightly bitter taste in the mouth for some people.

That gripe aside, Sidequest: 7th Sea is a great option for escape room fans looking to get their next hit from somewhere other than Exit or Undo games. I had a lot of fun with it, and I hope they manage to keep up the franchise tie-ins in the future. I have the Nemesis version here too, which I’ll be covering soon. Great stuff, and for less than £15 in most places, an easy recommendation for me to make.

Review copy kindly provided by Board&Dice. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Sidequest: 7th Sea (2023)

Design: Jakub Caban, Bartosz Idzikowski
Publisher: Board&Dice
Art: Zbigniew Umgelter, Aleksander Zawada
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 90-120 mins

The post Sidequest: 7th Sea Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Mystery Machine

Scooby-Doo (as I’ll shorten it to now) is a part of the Coded Chronicles series from The Op, a series which boasts this and one other game – The Shining: Escape from the Overlook Hotel. If you’ve played any of the Exit or Unlock series of games then the guts of Scooby-Doo will be immediately familiar. As you play the game you’ll gather cards as you explore rooms in the mansion, and by combining them and your character standees – and a little brainpower – you solve puzzles and progress through the story. Essentially, it’s an escape room game, and I’m a massive fan of escape rooms and puzzles in general, so I was excited to get a dose of childhood nostalgia at the same time.

If you’ve ever played an Exit game, you know the story is very loosely applied. It might be set in a pyramid or abandoned building, but there’s nothing really to make it feel like it. Scooby-Doo does things very differently here, by including a book for each of the characters. Without wanting to spoil the game, at various points you play as different members of the team, and as far as I’m concerned it should be obligatory to read out everything in character. The books are great; they’re bright and colourful, and the writing feels true to the cartoons. There are plenty of chances to ham it up and be the Velma you always dreamed you could be.

Pesky kids

I’ve played a load of games where you need to solve puzzles, so I’ve started to get to the stage where I can see the setup for something and think “Ah, this is going to be one of those”. I was expecting Scooby-Doo to seem simple compared to the likes of the Exit games I’ve played, or the Escape Tales games that I reviewed last year. I was half-right, I guess. Early on in the game, things are pretty easy, but you’d expect that in a game clearly aimed at families. When you get into the latter half of the game, however, it starts to require a bit more thinking. It’s done really nicely, there’s no sudden vertical ramp in difficulty, just enough of a slope to give a rewarding sense of success.

A lot has been done to make this game feel like Scooby-Doo. The characters’ voices in the text, the aesthetics, and the general scoobiness is all there. The way each member of the gang has a different skill works really nicely too. Each has their own speciality, which they can at least attempt to interact with different items and locations. Velma can research things, Fred can use stuff, and Shaggy and Scooby (perhaps predictably) eat and smell things. It doesn’t really matter too much who can do what, it’s just another clever way to add some flavour and theme to an already decent game.

The game system is really clever. The mansion slowly gets unveiled, and along the way you’ll be opening envelopes with all manner of secret stuff in them. My son was so excited every time we got to open a new envelope, and it adds a bit of theatre to the experience, which is super fun for kids and grown-ups alike.

Scrappy-Doo

When we finished playing Scooby-Doo, I got a real sense of deflation. Not because the story and the game weren’t good – both are great – but because it was over. More importantly, it was over, and it was completely finished. There’s just the one story in the box, and when you’re done with it, you’re done. You can reset it and start over, nothing gets destroyed in the same way it does in the Exit games, but it’ll just be the same story, same items, and same solution. That’s not a big deal when you’re buying an Unlock game for about £25 with three adventures in, or an Exit for less than £15. This is a game that’ll set you back nearly £30. Cost isn’t something I mention often, but it needs mentioning here.

HOWEVER…

My son didn’t mind one bit that the game would be the same the next time through. In fact, he’s already played it through twice on his own since. It’s a trait that other kids seem to share, if the conversations I’ve had with other parents is anything to go by. In the same way that I’ve watched Tremors a ridiculous number of times, they seem content to play something they know back-to-front, ad nauseum. It baffles me, frankly, but it’s the reason the game is still in my collection and not on the shelf at my local games café.

Final thoughts

If you like Escape Room games, you’ll have a good time with Scooby-Doo: Escape from the Haunted Mansion. If you fall in the middle of that Venn diagram where Escape Room and Scooby-Doo fans intersect, you’ll love it. It’s great fun, but it’s over pretty quickly. It’ll probably take you a couple of hours to go through in total, longer if you’re playing with kids and let them take the lead on things.

The puzzles are good, and none are so abstract that you’ll need spoilers to solve them – no rubber chickens with a pulley in the middle here. It’s a really fun experience, it’s just the cost that you have to take into consideration. For some reason, the fact that it comes in a bigger box than the alternatives I’ve mentioned above, makes it feel like it should give you more than it does. If you’ve got kids, it’s a really worthwhile purchase, because they enjoy the experience of playing, more than feeling frustrated that they already know the solution.

One of the things it does have going for it, is that the game can be fully reset, so you can sell it on, or give it to someone else to enjoy. I really enjoyed the game, my son loves it, and I’m looking forward to trying out further games built on the Coded Chronicles system. Scooby dooby doooooooo!

Review copy kindly provided TheOp. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Scooby Doo: Escape from the Haunted Mansion (2020)

Designers: Jay Cormier, Sen-Foong Lim
Publisher: TheOp
Art: Rob Lundy, Rick Hutchinson
Players: 1-99
Playing time: 120 mins

The post Scooby-Doo: Escape from the Haunted Mansion Review appeared first on Punchboard.

I love an Escape Room. I’ve done as many in-person rooms as I could before lockdown hit, and I’m a big fan of games that replicate the feeling, like the Exit series, and the Escape Tales games. I recently heard about a new escape room experience, an entirely web-based one called Webscapade, and was invited to come along and play.

In a team with my brother, sister-in-law, and our friend, we tested our wits and lateral thinking, playing through Season 0: Welcome to Argenia. The story is set in a fictional republic called Argenia, and big things are happening. The independence day celebrations have a dark spectre looming over them, and it’s up to you and your friends to figure out exactly what, and how you’re going to do something about it.

Just browsing?

The game is played in your web browser. You’ll need some other communication going on, so something like Zoom, Skype or Discord works well. The game is started with an email setting the scene, and the sleuthing starts from there. This is where the review gets tricky for me, because if I tell you how this all works, then I’m spoiling the experience for you. More importantly, I might be giving you an advantage which sees you overthrow my mighty Roscroggan Owls team, as the fastest on record so far.

Yeah, a little flex there maybe, but I’m very competitive.

Let’s just say that it uses your browser and tabs in a unique way, and one that really brought a smile to my face as I played it. The way it’s able to let you know when you’re done with a particular clue, is really clever. You’ll really need your wits about you to solve everything, and it’s certainly not easy. Some of the puzzles were pretty hard to grasp where to start, more than how to complete them.

Spit and polish

One of the most important things with an experience like this, is how polished it is. It really breaks the immersion when you can see the cracks, or run into problems. This can come from things being badly designed or tested, or from poor writing. I’m very happy to say that Webscapade suffers from none of these things. It’s extremely polished, from start to finish. The writing is great throughout, and I love the tongue-in-cheek humour. That same humour carries through the whole experience, and while it’s not a funny game, I defy anyone not to laugh when you complete it.

There’s a great hint system, which I obviously tested just to see how it works. For the review, you understand. We never got stuck, no sir, not once. A pre-warning, you’ll need at least one active Facebook account to play the game. I’m not going to explain why, but you do need it, and the way it’s used is really clever too. Those of you who think they can outsmart the developers and just view the page source for shortcuts are out of luck too – I tried. I enjoy kicking the tyres while I’m playing.

Final thoughts

Webscapade is great. We had a great time playing it, and the ability to either work on a particular puzzle together, or branch out and try to work on things together, is fantastic. The setting of this republic under threat is nicely implemented, and I love the way the fictional city you’re in feels real. The way the websites have been created to convey the imaginary places, feel very genuine.

I normally try to touch on any negative points during a review, just to make sure you get a feel for the real experience of playing the game. With Webscapade though, I’m honestly finding it very hard to find anything negative to talk about. The whole experience was great, from start to end. I will definitely be back for Season 1, when it launches.

If you’re a fan of escape rooms, puzzles, riddles, code-breaking – or if you just want to do something a bit different for an hour with your friends – you could do a lot worse than Webscapade. It’s $25 (£18) per team to play, works with any decent, modern browser. I had a great time with it, as did the rest of my team. It’s a solid, tricky escape room, and I highly recommend it. Have a look now, by clicking here.

Webscapade gave me a free ticket to play. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Special Offer – 25% discount – from now until August 31st you can use the code ‘punchboard’ to get 25% off your play of Webscapade: Season 0

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