Thames & Kosmos EXIT: The Secret Lab - Kennerspiel des Jahres Winner-2017

Bought for a friend and they liked it. They told me they spent hours on it and found it very challenging and satisfying. The concept is certainly fun and i will be buying one for myself someday.

Good game a s always with Exit, at times a bit difficult, but always fun!

This is a really interesting and in depth game. We had to use a couple of clues to help us in the beginning but once you start to recognise what to look for it becomes a little easier. It challenged us well and we will definitely be buying more of them! I played it with my 11 year old and it took us longer than an hour, which was actually great as it was bought to occupy us over an afternoon. I won't put an image as I don't want to spoil it for anyone.

Spoiler Free review: This was the first Exit the Game that I tried as it was recommended and a moderate difficulty (3.5/5). I played it two player. Overview: It was fun, and did make me want to try other (harder)titles, but it could have done more with some of the puzzles. If you have escape room experience, you will have no trouble with this, but it was still entertaining and took about an hour. This was great with two people, and would likely be great for one person or a family. There's maybe not enough to do for a larger amount of players (6). Pros: There's a great variety of puzzles in here! The designers have thought of many ways to use card and paper for some unexpected solutions. The system of checking answers is also very smart. This was great played with two people and did take about an hour. Nice, small box full of goodies to explore. It does a pretty good job of emulating the different types of puzzles that are found in escape rooms and the puzzles generally related well to the theme of the lab. Everything in the box is of a high quality card and print. Cons: my main criticism is that some of the later puzzles were easier and felt a little lazy. At the start, there were some real head scratchers that took a couple of steps to solve, but at the end some clues were solved with just one card or step. This lead towards a somewhat quick and anticlimatic finish. The game is not expensive but can only be played properly once. Some cutting up is involved. However, you could still give this to somebody else afterwards and it would not lose too much value in the experience. We did not use any of the hint cards, and so felt like we didn't touch half the things in the box. That and our relatively quick solving meant the value for money was so so for me. The artwork could have been used more. Many of the cards have only text or basic diagrams for riddles. It would have been nice if more things were hidden in artwork/the room. Further, the flavour text on the cards added nothing to the game. More could have been done with this, too. The theme overall could have been a bit stronger to be more immersive. Conclusion: a great way for two of us to spend an evening. It was fun and had some satisfying puzzles, but also some puzzles that felt more lazy. It made me want to try one of the harder boxes which also seem to be the highest rated. I would recommended trying out these games, select a difficulty that will work well for you!

Just a few things I wished I'd realised that others might find helpful: - The Exit Games have difficulty ratings and as a first timers playing this type of game, should have probably opted for a level 2! But that said, we certainly got our money's worth trying to solve the riddles. - There appears to be an order for this particular series, so possibly getting part one before part two would have made more sense. However, it didnt actually detract from the game play. Just feel like Ive skipped a book! - that the other interactive games that use social media or other apps isn't necessarily better, and the fact this one was a small box, with cardboard pieces actually is all you need (I also bought another game from another company but you needed to install telegram to play the game and that didn't work out very well because the servers had a glitch). So personally I'll be sticking to this brand! Overall we really enjoyed playing this game, so much so I've ordered another one to play over Christmas. Clever riddles, neat twists and turns, and the three tier help cards means you can inch along if you get stuck rather than go straight for the answer. Read the instructions together as a team, didn't take long to work things out, used about 6 help cards (there re three per riddle) so it's definitely doable for the less experienced game players.

This is the closest thing I have found so far to an escape room at home. It leaves a bit to the imagination (texts instead of videos), but the puzzles are great fun. I was hesitant at first because I thought it was a 'card game', it is not a card game at all, the cards are just an ingeniously used medium for the puzzles. I have played the Secret Lab (3.5 difficulty) and The Forgotten Island (3 difficulty). I have to say, I found the Forgotten Island MUCH harder than the Secret Lab, though this could just be due to the different type of puzzles, however both were extremely fun and well thought out, and I never felt cheated once the clues had been used to figure out what I wasn't getting. They are not ideally reusable, though if you wanted to pass it on to someone they could have a good go at perhaps 70% of the puzzles, but then I think they are so reasonably priced that you can buy them as a gift without issue. If you like escape rooms, or books such as Journal 29 , definitely give these a go!

Colleagues were talking about 'exit games' in the staff room - saying they were like an escape room type thing you can play at home. i thought cool - as i liked board games, and the price is really good so i gave it a go and we bought one as a family to play at xmas. It was soooooooo good, the puzzles are hard! but there are clues! so the puzzles are suitable for all abilities in your group, also the puzzle styles are different - a mix of image based ones or numerical ones, word ones... it really kept us thinking! And yes... we had to use a lot of the clues, but we won the game! We liked it so much we bought one as a gift for someone else. Remember though this game is once and done.... you can't relay it. But totally worth it.

Fun, but I didn't enjoy it as much as another one I had done in the series (The Abandoned Cabin). There were one or two very tricky puzzles, one of which we solved in a slightly incorrect way but it seemed to give us an answer, leading to a lot of confusion. We also managed to accidentally misinterpret something which led us to 'escape' early, ruining the enjoyment and flow of the game - and I don't think this misinterpretation was unreasonable. We did manage to carry on 'properly' though! Recommend the series, but start with The Abandoned Cabin if you haven't done so already - if you have, try one of the others.