There’s a stupid amount of escape the room type games on the App Store. If you haven’t played one, they’re basically bite sized point and click adventure games with the main goal being, obviously, escaping from a room. Most of the time the solution is very obscure, requiring you to search for objects, combine them, use them on different things to get different objects, and so on.
Well, our fearless leader Arn stumbled across something really awesome on the internet today. It’s called Escape The Room NYC and it’s these exact kind of games turned in to a real-life puzzle. They’ve got five different venues, ranging from a creepy apartment to a spy agency themed one, to a Victorian home mystery setting. Each game takes an hour, for between 8 and 12 players depending on the scenario, for $28 a pop. Their Facebook is full of photos of teams who either did (or didn’t) solve the puzzles.
I asked Jared what some of the best escape the room type games on the App Store are to include with this, but he brings up a good point: Saying “What’s the best escape the room game?" is a lot like asking “What’s the best Slender Man game?" There’s so many, and everyone has their own favorite, that it’s impossible to even tell. I like Factory 96 (Free), but, that’s just because its production value are (or were) a little better than the storm of escape the room games that hit the App Store in the early days.
So, if you live in NYC, would you ever go to a real-world escape the room? I think it sounds awesome. Additionally, for people looking to get in to virtual escaping of rooms, leave a comment and let us know your favorite one on the App Store.
This was a great review. I appreciate how informative it was. I've wanted to check out one of these books/apps for a while and Shawn has convinced me that this is the one for me. Thanks for being so thorough and for covering more than just the most popular new games.
This is one of the FF books I missed back in the day so I was very much looking forward to it. It's a fun implementation (although I can't help feeling that these days Tin Man are just playing catch up to Inkle) but the major disappointment for me is that the writing is absolutely atrocious, even by FF standards. I find it incredible that this was written by the same man responsible for the Sorcery! series (my favourite game books, after Blood Sword).
FF books have always been pretty crummy pieces of writing. Great at capturing theme in the moment to moment but just atrocious as stories. Gamebook Adventures are all so much better written that I hope Tin Man goes back to them.
Are people really wowed by the flash of the Sorcery books? They were slick but the old gamebook engine Tin Man uses wasn't bad at all. Anything is better than the atrocious new Lone Wolf tedium though.
I'm so happy for Tin Man Games to get their due. Spot on review!
I've decided not to update till I get a new device (heard stories that it can break older games) and this only runs on 7.1, a real shame as I really enjoy these game books. Hope Tin Man don't make this a standard, the last one they put out ran on iOS 5 and over.
Great review. Anyway I'm into gamebooks mainly for the nostalgia, so count me among those who like literal adaptations.
There's clearly a lot of love and work in this one, but I'd rather it feel like a book, with dice, map and character sheet. After all they are called gameBooks!
This one, no matter how beautiful, doesn't give me the feeling I'm reading one of them old Fighting Fantasy books.
I know what you're probably thinking, a bunch of nostalgic dont make for the entire market. True, but then if you're going to develop something that different from an actual book, why not make it an original game (and not an adaptation) like Inkle is doing?
The first conversions of gamebooks started with Big Blue Bubble, not Tin Man games. Bubble also did fairly straight translations of the FF books, even though they were still enjoyable. There was also an iOS version of The Shamutanti Hills back in the early days of iOS that disappeared from the App Store, way before Inkles brilliant version was released. It's been a fascinating new subgenre to watch evolve over time.
Thanks. I worded that poorly. I knew about the earlier Fighting Fantasy conversions, but I was going for were game books that went beyond what you could do with a paper book. I remembered the Bubble ones being very straight conversions. But re-reading how I wrote that, I made my point badly.
Great review, and I'm glad they're getting into the more offbeat books. I really hope they'll take on Freeway Fighter (#13). I thought it was very unlikely earlier, but this present release plus the buzz surrounding the upcoming Mad Max film makes it seem much more likely to me. If you haven't read Freeway Fighter, it borrows heavily from Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior.