Review: The Haunted Roller Coaster

RATING: 3 Keys RESULT: Win REMAINING: 40:21

Life is a roller coaster. Also it’s haunted, apparently. And it has nothing to do with anything.

Thames & Kosmos follows a consistently formulaic path through all of their escape game titles. As such, you’ll notice throughout the span of our reviews for various Exit: The Game titles, certain segments may carry over, simply because it defines the big picture information about this product line as a whole. Each review will, however, continue to include unique, game specific information.

Story

Dark corridors, terrifying shrieks, bone-chilling monsters — sounds like a lot of fun, right? At least that’s what you thought when you decided to take a ride on the haunted roller coaster at the amusement park. But suddenly you are stuck in a really freaky place. The ride’s gates are locked tight in front of and behind you. You stumble upon a strange riddle. Can you summon up all your courage to solve the riddles and escape the haunted roller coaster?

We had played several Exit: The Game titles before this one, and frankly swore we wouldn’t return for another. It was the story, alone, for The Haunted Roller Coaster that made us reconsider. A unique setting – and one that connects with something many of us at the site are also passionate about – theme parks and roller coasters. It was enough to get us to take the leap and give Thames & Kosmos another “last chance.”

Like all Exit: The Game offerings, the story has little to do with what actually occurs throughout the course of the game beyond lightly themed graphical materials. The Haunted Roller Coaster is no exception – despite starting on the titular thrill ride, park goers quickly find themselves abandoning the train they’ve been trapped in and leaving it – and the notion of a roller coaster in general behind. From there, things turn “friendly Halloween” flavored for the duration.

Consistent across all Exit: The Game titles, expect a lot of really dry reading, full of narrative that frankly is neither interesting nor compelling. It’s just pages of words for the sake of having pages of words, all while the clock continues to tick away during the course of gameplay.

We remain uncertain what made the roller coaster haunted in the first place, or you know, how a roller coaster can be haunted for that matter.

Scenic

As we’ve touched on previously, being a home game, we define “Scenic,” from a graphic design perspective, as well as the quality, weight and feel of print materials inside the box.

We mentioned that Thames & Kosmos goes the route of mostly card-based escape home games. Each edition is produced to a fairly high level of quality – with fairly thick, glossy textures that have the feel of a deck of playing cards, while also carrying similar dimensions of 3.5″ x 2.25″ in size. Each Exit: The Game edition also includes a themed booklet spanning multiple pages that connects with tasks identified on the cards. A 4.5″ cardostock decoder wheel, always featuring three rotatable discs that align to highlight an answer code is included in every box.

Exit: The Game titles also make use of something they like to call “strange items.” Basically, these are “anything else” left in the box. In the case of The Haunted Roller Coaster, the strange items are a Frankenstein Monsters body parts, and sheet of orgami paper, because, you know, the roller coaster is haunted.

Each game’s respective page within the Kosmo Games Helper App is lightly themed to its storyworld, featuring package art as the wallpaper for the time clock and background music scores to help transport the adventure off the cards and bring it to life all around players.

Puzzles

Progressing through an Exit: The Game scenario will lead players on a primarily card-based gameplay adventure to match a three digit number with a unique shape, which must then be entered into an included decoder wheel. If correct, this will indicate the next card(s) to draw from the deck. Where things get tedious, however, is that each answer will lead you to a card which then directs you to verify your solution and draw yet another card. This unnecessary double-step quickly becomes tiresome throughout the course of gameplay.

Each Exit: The Game title has the option of being run through the Kosmos Games Helper App, free in the Apple iTunes and Google Play stores. Through it, you’ll be able to manage time limits and listen along to themed background music that helps bring the storyworld of each game to life. In general, this is the least inclusive home game app we’ve encountered.

But perhaps worst of all, Exit: The Game products have a nasty habit of hiding clues and codes outside of the game itself, in places like the retail packaging, under cardboard dividers within the box, in the instruction manuals and yes, even the SKU number on the items bar code. Not only does this present an illogical and irrational expectation that players are to connect, but it instantly kills what little storyworld an Exit: The Game title has managed to build up to that point, breaking the fourth wall for, well, absolutely no reason or benefit what so ever.

Overall

The Haunted Roller Coaster is one of more than a dozen escape room home activities available for sale under the “Exit: The Game” branding from Thames & Kosmos. Unlike other home games, these are each individually packaged, and thus carry a relatively lower price point. We’d suggest, however, that in the case of Exit: The Game, this is generally a matter of “you get what you pay for.”

We’ve played nearly every Exit: The Game box released to this point, and interestingly enough, The Haunted Roller Coaster is the one which we found to be the brand’s least annoying title. Perhaps due in part to its intended easier game play, this is the closest exception to the otherwise consistent general rule that these Thames & Kosmos products are typically stacked from top to bottom with one logic leap after another.

A great escape game brings to life the mantra, “time flies when you’re having fun.” For us, Exit: The Game has often been quite the opposite. An hour or a bit more playing one of these home games often feels like an eternity. They’re dry, oftentimes tedious and rarely, if ever, include any of those clever “ah ha!” moments we long for in an escape game. Even worse, the majority of Thames & Kosmos’ titles are riddled with more logic leaps than, well, riddles themselves.

At the end of the day, after playing more than a dozen of them now, we just can’t easily recommend this brand to you, our readers. But if you, like us, have an inexplicable “try everything at least once” mindset when it comes to escape games, The Haunted Roller Coaster is probably the one to get for your taste of Thames & Kosmos. Just understand that like any real roller coaster, things quickly go downhill from here.