Review: A Noside Story

RATING: 5 Keys RESULT: Win REMAINING: 20:29

LOAD THE SAUSAGE O’GUN™ AND SET IT FOR WORLD DOMINATION! MUHAHAHA!

Story

Our story begins in a most unconventional way – but, when dealing with that dastardly Professor Noside, is there really any other way but unconventional?

A thick smoke lingers over the region. Another dirty trick of Noside? Stop him before it’s too late.

It’s once again our time to answer to call and be the hero this city needs, probably. We heard that in a movie once. Professor Noside has returned, and he’s once again up to nonsensical no-good.

Agents infiltrate his private residence in hopes of putting an end to whatever madness he’s got cooking this time. Along the way, several rather… unique animals… will need their own special attention. Everything in Noside’s worth is outlandish, and these critters are no different. (Well, they’re very different; just not relatively speaking.) Luckily, our old pal James the mouse returns from Squeek & Sausage to lend another tiny helping hand!

Anytime agents encounter Professor Noside, they can expect a story-driven adventure that’s stupid in all the best possible ways. Playing out like a real-life cartoon, A Noside Story is a delightfully dumb change of pace from countless games tasking us with saving the world from life-or-death consequences.

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 Space Cowboys goes the route of fully card-based escape home games. Each edition is produced to the highest levels of quality – with thick, glossy textures that have the feel of a upscale deck of playing cards. Unlock!’s decks, however, are larger than a traditional card – measuring in at nearly 4.5″ tall by 2.5″ wide.

Something we’ve always enjoyed about Space Cowboys is their use of multiple different artists for each Unlock! box set. What results is a distinctly different animation style, evoking unique moods that help bring each storyworld to life. No two decks within a set will ever feel the same, or even slightly similar, for that matter.

A Noside Story features some of our favorite art from any Unlock! set, with the most outlandish cartoon characters and absurd settings, every card drawn from this deck is a laugh-out-loud worthy surprise.

Each game’s respective page within the Unlock! app fully compliments the theme of its storyworld, with unique buttons, sound effects enhance the experience.

Puzzles

For a game that aims to be inane, every single step in A Noside Story is logical, intuitive and clear, always furthering the narrative while leading to the next puzzle. Unlock! will have agents thinking outside the traditional escape room box, and truly require them to enter the cartoon world to use off-the-wall problem solving in order to progress through this mission. Despite the theme, every bit of the nonsense makes sense.

Although agents are here to ultimately stop Noside, being the good guy comes with certain expectations of being helpful. Don’t be surprised if your mission has you hatching eggs, milking cows and even doing laundry for our nefarious foe building up to a final epic battle.

We’ll caution agents to keep their eyes peeled for hidden clues. We missed one (in hindsight – it was obviously our own fault) and resulted in a bit of a muddled mess. If you find yourself stuck, it’s assuredly because you haven’t noticed something that’s been right in front of you the entire time.

Each Unlock! game is run through a free app, available in the Apple iTunes and Google Play stores. Through it, you’ll not only manage time limits and receive hints, but also enter various codes and even solve some of the puzzles in tech-driven, digital setting. As an added bonus, the Unlock! app also includes themed background music that helps bring the storyworld of each game to life, sometimes even triggering sound effects to further enhance specific puzzles.

The app allows games to be played either with or without penalties for incorrect answers. We prefer playing without penalties, as we feel it more truly mimics a physical escape game experience where you may try a code in a lock when you’re uncertain. Although the penalty free mode is activated (in the app’s Settings) by turning off the timer, rest assured you will still receive your escape time at the end. In fact, turning off the timer is the only way to receive an accurate escape time, as penalties add multiple minutes to your overall duration.

A Noside Story has some really clever app-based interactions, including multiple triggered audio tracks and a baking puzzle. That’s right, investigators will need to stop their mission and use some really clever mechanics to actually bake a cake at one point – and the outcome is, well, as to be expected. It all builds to capturing Noside with the help of the most modern technology available (on a budget). Activating it will definitely require some outside-the-box thinking.

Overall

A Noside Story is the easy difficulty game released as apart of Unlock! Secret Adventures – Space Cowboy’s third commercial outing. This series may be purchased either individually or as a complete set, packing not one but three different full length home games inside the box. Interestingly, at the time we ordered ours, we’ve found it’s almost always proven cheaper to purchase each single game one by one on Amazon. We advise you to price your options to find the most cost effective way to add Unlock! games to your own collection. It would appear as though Unlock! has since moved away from the individual games with newer releases, instead making them only available as single-boxed three packs.

As with each Unlock! offering, a playable Tutorial is included. It should be noted that the Tutorial is the same in every Unlock! series, so once you’ve played it, there’s not much benefit in revisiting it.

Space Cowboys also has a series of free, downloadable games – called Unlock! Demo Adventures – available through their website, which you can find by clicking here. They range in length, although several are full 60 minute games. To play them, it’s best if you have access to a printer and several sheets of cardstock, as well as a scissors to cut out each individual card. Just for fun, we did try playing one game “fully digital,” with the help of Photoshop to lay out each of the cards on our virtual desktop – and while it did work, and we still were able to enjoy the Unlock! experience, we found this to be far more time consuming than just taking a few minutes and a few sheets of paper to print them out as intended.

There aren’t many times where we can describe something as “so stupid” and mean it as the highest possible compliment. This mission is easily one of Unlock!’s very best, crafting a comedy-based universe that becomes instantly immersive. It’s equal parts clever challenge and unexpected laughs.

A Noside Story is presented with limited commercial interruptions. (Hey, they’ve gotta pay the bills somehow!)