Break In Alcatraz

A little difficult to put together but fun to play.

I'm not usually moved to write reviews for products, but I need to make an exception here. I ordered this game to help wrestle the family away from the digital realm for a few hours and am really glad I did. Not only am I impressed with the game play, but the playing board itself it exceptional. It's beautiful, functional and engaging!I also learned something . . . I was surprised to learn that this game, in part, is based on actual events, AND I LIVE IN THE BAY AREA! Shameful, I know.We had a delightful evening marveling at the art and figuring out the crafty puzzles inside. Nothing too easy or overwhelming - just right. Took us about 2 and a half hours to play and provided us a screen free couple of hours.The box says it's for 10 and up, and I would agree with that assessment. We have three teens that took great interest in the, shall we say, "subverting of authority" angle of the game.Now they are bugging me to show them "Escape from Alcatraz", which I haven't seen either (like I said - shameful), so we have that to look forward to as well.This is a great game and I Highly Recommend it!

I didn't have high hopes going in to this game, given the other reviews, and they aren't wrong, but I was happy for the price I paid ($15). The quality of the game pieces was better than I expected. There's even a plastic 3D puzzle included. The opening layers is unique. Though you'll want to use something flat like a butter knife to help pop the cardstock layers off the plastic studs when its time.This game would be difficult to do in a medium or large group. I played it with one other person, and that was a good number. While there are a couple cases where 3 puzzles can be done in parallel because they are printed on separate cards, there's still only one card giving you direction on all 3 puzzles that you'll have to share, and most of the game is played serially. The printing is small, so you can't have a lot of people working one puzzle at a time. The game rules suggest you take a picture with your phone so multiple players can work it at the same time, but that's pretty ridiculous. And the fact that all the layers stay connected throughout the game, makes it a clumsy to pass around and look at. You'll also need a bright place to play. I would recommend having a flashlight on hand. There's a couple puzzles that are hard to view otherwise.There are a good number of puzzles, with good variety, and for the most part they are the quality you would expect from this kind of game. But there is some conflicting information in some of them that does lower the quality of the game. And some vagueness where there shouldn't be. Like at the start there is a card that says "read this card" and has a picture of a talking face; that actually means pull a card from the deck that has that talking face picture, but when I first saw it I thought it was just saying to read the card aloud. We also had a mix up in our game and didn't realize we were supposed to start the game with the toolbox card and mailbox card. The rules do say that you start with the radio, tools, and letter, but we thought the letter was the previous story page in the rules and didn't realize we could keep the toolbox card either. It didn't call them cards. They could have easily avoided the confusion by also mentioning the card #, but didn't. They had the card icons, but they put them next to an unrelated tip about the making sure the perforations of the toolbox card and another card were cut out. One of the first lines in the rules say to look online for updated clues and hints, which we didn't do, but that's pretty bad to immediately tell people to look for corrections outside the game. We didn't use much of the hints, but the ones we tried to did leave something to be desired. There's also one card at the start of the game that you have 2 paths to get to (by the first puzzle or by reading another card) which left us wondering if we really understood the rules at the time. Those are little things that could have been easily cleared up. As for the conflicting information, there were 3 puzzles that had some contradictory information that threw us off. I do understand the answers, but that contradictory information should have been cleared up.Like other escape room games, once you solve it, you've solved it. But it is very easy to return the game back to its original state, more than most games of this nature, so you can give it to other friends. And I'll keep it to play again once I forget it. Though the shape and size of the box is annoying.

I would have given 5 stars except this game did seems as though some puzzles were a little bit of a stretch. That said loved the concept and gameplay with the game board. Would give another escape game like this a try.

Review for Break in Alcatraz. My daughter pretty much summed it up: “I’d rather just spend the rest of my life in prison”. We played another escape room game—Escape from Dr. Gravely’s, and although we weren’t extremely challenged, it was just enough to really enjoy. The concept of the “break in to break out” is great, and the physical design is kind of cool, but from the very start, the instructions are incredibly unclear (we would have been stuck from the beginning if we didn’t look up the instructions video online which gave informative the game itself forgot to provide). The game includes some puzzles that are probably not that difficult to solve, but by the time we got to them, we’d lost the will to even attempt. This is good for lots of confusion and frustration, so I guess if that’s what you’re looking for in an escape game, go for it? Lots of potential not realized here.The story also has some gaps. Slight spoiler alert that’s probably worth reading before playing: one character is inexplicably introduced only to be left behind. I kept waiting for an update on Allen—probably the only reason I kept reading hints to get to the end, having long since stopped caring about the puzzles—but no news ever came about the man left behind (other than my daughter saying she’d rather be him).Last note—it’s completely possible to put back together, which we did. However, we’re now unsure if we really want to subject anyone to it. Not great.

Good concept, but too hard. If the puzzles are too hard, it’s not any fun.