Escape Puzzle Temple – Riddle Your Way Out! | Review

The Escape Puzzle Temple is one of the most challenging of this special type of escape games for the home that Ravensburger has published so far. We find ourselves in an ancient temple complex in the middle of the jungle and it’s a matter of doing puzzles, solving riddles and escaping!

Grotesque grimaces, rampant jungle thickets and old walls are what you put together in this escape puzzle to an old temple complex in Angkor Wat. When we regain consciousness after a strange fall, we know immediately that we must escape from this place as quickly as possible. But that’s easier said than done – because many things look so very different from the puzzle cover and both the puzzle and many a puzzle have it in them!

Ravensburger brought out these special Art Escape Games for the home in 2018, the only ones so far where you have to puzzle the Escape Room together first. The motif of the Escape Puzzle Temple shows many strange signs, strange codes and hidden clues when you look closely: after the puzzle, you have to find, solve and combine all the puzzles and thus find your way out.

This new kind of puzzle combined with puzzle fun is a variation of the game manufacturer to make the Escape Game trend playable at home. Because classic Room Escape Games are prop-filled rooms in a fixed location whose puzzles a team must solve in 60 minutes to successfully complete a mission and escape from the Escape Room. I am a passionate Escape Game player and have played in more than 20 Escape Games including the World Rescued from Space and puzzled me out of Alice in Wonderland’s dream at Alice in Smartland.

Three Escape Puzzles were published by Ravensburger in 2018, which differ in the level of difficulty in puzzling and solving puzzles and in the mission too! To give you an idea, check out the performances of the Escape Puzzle Witch’s Kitchen and the Escape Puzzle Space Observatory as well. Since I have played all three Escape Puzzles, my experiences are incorporated into the pros and cons as well as the conclusion.

How varied, coherent and challenging are the puzzles in Escape Puzzle Temple?

Who is it worth buying this Escape Puzzle for?

Note: Ravensburger kindly sent us a review copy of the Escape Puzzle Temple. However, this review is unpaid and reflects our honest opinion.

The Escape Puzzle Temple at a Glance

• Game type: Puzzle, Puzzle game, Escape game, Adult puzzle, Family game
• Age: from 12 years
• Players: 1 player or more
• Duration: approx. 7-10 hours
• Publisher: Ravensburger Spieleverlag
• Game author: Johannes Schiller
• Year of publication: 2018
• Game objective: Puzzle the ancient temple of Angkor Wat into an Escape Room and then solve the puzzles hidden inside to escape.

Ravensburger EXIT Puzzle 19951 Tempel in Angkor Wat 759 Teile

18,43 EUR

Escape Puzzle Temple – Escape the Puzzle Room

Game Material

The Escape Puzzle Temple consists of 759 puzzle pieces measuring 70 cm x 50 cm, an envelope with the final solution and a multilingual quick guide with story, mission and a QR code to an app with tips on the puzzles.

The Escape Puzzle Temple – the Escape Room

Jungle plants overgrow old walls covered with small-scale patterns, strange characters and cobwebs. In between, butterflies flutter, well-camouflaged lizards bask in the sun and snakes and crocodiles lie in wait for a slow puzzler. The motif is in the colours green, brown and yellow and the difficulty level is for adults – especially the animal heads and are a challenge!

When doing the puzzle, you quickly realise that the motif differs from the depiction on the cover of the box – this makes the puzzle even harder and you go on a discovery tour while doing the puzzle and become curious about what the strange deviations might mean.  If you are used to putting the edge pieces together first, you can forget it with this challenging puzzle: all the pieces fit together and it is impossible to put the edge together correctly at the beginning with this motif! In terms of demand, it is the most difficult of the 3 escape puzzles from Ravensburger and should make even experienced puzzlers happy.

The story: On holiday in Asia, you take a trip to a temple complex. There you enter a path that leads you deep into the thicket. When you take a break, the rock beneath you suddenly gives way and you fall down and find yourself inside the ancient temple complex. High above, daylight still shimmers but all around you the hungry eyes of crocodiles watch you.

The mission: Escape the temple!

The Riddles

Only when the motif is puzzled together do the riddles reveal themselves, which have to be solved in order to escape from the temple. The deviations from the cover motif are good clues as to where to look for the riddles: suddenly animal heads have grown out of stone at the temple, weathered numbers and signs have been carved into the temple wall. Now you just have to figure them out…

A total of 8 puzzles are hidden in the Escape Puzzle Temple. The instructions do not give you any clues as to where to look, only a QR code in the instructions takes you to an app that gives clues to the solutions and shows where the puzzles are hidden. So you have to look carefully, but everything you need to know to solve the puzzles is in the Escape Room!

Most of the puzzles were easy to solve – but two of them were quite tricky for us, we couldn’t find the solution by ourselves without help. As with classic Escape Games, this Escape Puzzle offers different types of puzzles such as picture, symbol and deciphering puzzles. As I have already done two Escape Puzzles, I quickly had an idea of the final solution and this helped me to solve the individual puzzles.
As with the Live Escape Game, the Escape Puzzle Temple also offers help if you get stuck. To get help, you scan the QR code in the game booklet with your smartphone or tablet and are taken to a page that immediately reveals the location of the puzzles.

As a finale, you open the envelope enclosed in the game with the final solution.

Rating and Conclusion

[review id=”74921″]

For Whom Is the Escape Puzzle Temple Worthwhile?

Escape Puzzles combine puzzle fun with riddles – but they are puzzles first and foremost, and as a bonus there is then a mission to puzzle over afterwards with an aha effect. The Temple of Angkor War is a challenging puzzle for adults, for which you should plan 6-8 hours of puzzle time! The puzzle afterwards takes about 30 minutes to 1 hour. Unlike other Escape Games for the home, which you play in one evening, you should plan several days for this one.

If you like doing puzzles and love challenging, great motifs, you will enjoy this Exscape Puzzle. If you are primarily looking for puzzle fun, you are better off with an Escape Game for your home.

Unlike many Escape Games for the home, you can also puzzle and play the Escape Puzzle all by yourself.

Since I found the Escape Puzzle Temple much more difficult to puzzle and the puzzles are not without their difficulties, I recommend trying out the Space Observatory or the Witches’ Kitchen first.

Pro and Con

In addition to the challenging motif, the Escape Puzzle comes with a story, a mission and puzzles, and curiosity is already aroused while doing the puzzle. The deviations from the cover make the puzzle even more challenging – and that’s because all the edge pieces are punched the same way and you can’t puzzle the edge together first. As a bonus to the puzzle, there are also the riddles, which give the puzzle a nice added value.

You have to find the 8 puzzles yourself in the Escape Puzzle – the only help in the instructions is that you should pay attention to the numbers on the edge. Overall, we found the puzzles not quite as rounded as those in the Observatory and the Witches’ Kitchen. In the picture puzzle, for example, you have to look very closely to discover tiny deviations despite the punching of the puzzle pieces.

On the positive side, there are different types of puzzles to crack – from logic puzzles, symbol puzzles to codes. This makes the puzzles very varied.

The solutions to the 8 puzzles culminate in the final solution, which, as usual from Ravensburger, is a successful implementation of the escape game theme with the puzzle.
While you puzzle for yourself and search for matching pieces, the puzzles add interaction as you puzzle together and search for the solution.

Unlike many Escape Games for the home, where you use up the game material while playing, you can play Exscape Puzzles again. It currently costs €13.49 in the Ravensburger shop – in our opinion, that’s a very fair price for what you get!

Conclusion

The Escape Puzzle Temple is a challenging puzzle for adults that is a bonus Escape Games for the home. The puzzles hidden within vary in difficulty and variety, culminating in a finale. The puzzle and the concept of the Escape Game fit together perfectly and anyone who loves challenging puzzles and likes to puzzle will get their money’s worth!

Angebot

Ravensburger EXIT Puzzle 19952 Hexenküche 759 Teile

11,29 EUR

Angebot

Ravensburger EXIT Puzzle 19950 Sternwarte 759 Teile

11,49 EUR

Angebot

Ravensburger EXIT Puzzle 19953 Im U- Boot 759 Teile

11,29 EUR

Angebot

Ravensburger EXIT Puzzle 19954 Im Drachenlabor 759 Teile

12,49 EUR

Ravensburger EXIT Puzzle 19955 - Im Vampirschloss - 759 Teile Puzzle für Erwachsene und Kinder ab 12 Jahren

21,89 EUR

By the way, on Greatime we have lots more board game tips and activities with friends.

Never miss one of our ideas again? It’s easy: follow us on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to our newsletter!

*This article contains affiliate links. This means that if a product (e.g. from amazon) is ordered through it, we receive a small commission without changing the price for the buyer.