Review: The Quandary - Left at Home

RATING: # Keys RESULT: Win REMAINING: 9:42

Who knew that setting up traps could be so fun

Story

Have a joyful time playing a non-copyright infringing tale of a young man who is left HOME ALONE for the holidays. You are in the role of Cal McKevinister, an 8-year-old, living in the suburbs of Chicago. Your family has left on a vacation and has mistakenly left you HOME ALONE. Now you need to make plans and set traps to fend off neighborhood bandits who are trying to rob your house.

It’s Christmas time, stockings are hung by the chimney with care, presents are wrapped and carefully placed under a tree and your family is nowhere in sight. Accidentally being left behind while the family goes on a trip sounds like a great time until you notice some bandits that are apparently casing your neighborhood. They’re talking about waiting an hour to make sure the coast is clear and then coming back to rob the house. Cal has come up with a plan to booby trap the entire house to keep the bandits out and save Christmas but he has to set up everything before they come back.

Scenic

The Quandary has done a solid job creating a house in a somewhat awkward space overall. The left behind start off in a typical suburban living room complete with a fire place, a decorated Christmas trees with various presents underneath it, a couch and everything else you would expect to see in a family room. Eventually the rest of the house is explored as well which includes the brothers room and the kitchen. The brothers room is a small space that’s just used to further the game and isn’t set up to be a full room which is a bit jarring.

The kitchen is feels like a real, lived in kitchen. There’s a table set up for a future family dinner, a fridge, cabinets, a sink and even the floor is different from the living room to give off a nice transition and to make it seem like you’re changing rooms in an actual house. It’s these small attentions to details that go a long way.

Puzzles

First things first, this is clearly inspired by the fantastic movie Home Alone (to put it lightly) and The Quandary doesn’t try to hide that fact. I mean, the lead character is even named Cal McKevinister. The whole game is very much tongue in cheek though as opposed to a straight up rip off. Even the clue system has a themed overlay, they call it Letters to Santa. Teams are giving a small pad of paper and a pencil which is used to write to Santa and then slid through the slot of the front door. Shortly after there’s a knock at the door and a response letter flutters through the same slot with our hint. It might feel a bit clunky but it’s a cute idea that ends up being pretty fun.

The object of this game isn’t just to escape or find something that’s missing. Instead, fellow abandoned kids have to use Cal’s map and properly booby trap the house and keeping the burglars out. This is a great idea that’s a lot of fun but just misses on the execution. Instead of finding what’s needed for each trap and then setting it up, you just find an item and place it in the proper area. If there would be away to take that extra step of making it feel like the set up would successfully ambush the burglars then the idea could truly be something special.

There are a number of truly fun puzzles throughout. At one point there’s a number of army men set up that need to be shot down with a plastic dart gun to get the solution to a puzzle that was so simplistic but oh so satisfying. The Quandary also did a good job of making up reasons for locks being in a home for the most part so it didn’t seem out of place.

The big downfall is that there are a few logic leaps throughout as well so it’s almost impossible to escape without using at least a couple hints. There is one specific puzzle that was a big time waster and was purely based on luck and persistence. It got to the point that our team actually had to use a hint just to make sure we were even doing it right and the response was to just keep trying and eventually it should work.

Overall

Left at Home is by no means a perfect game but with it’s unique concept and fun puzzles it was still a blast. With a few minor tweaks this could be a 5 key game. Their other games are all “inspired” by popular movies as well giving the whole venue a bit of a theme. Nobody likes being left behind but if that’s what it takes to go on this zany adventure then there’s worse things that could happen.