A spoiler-free review of Unlock: Exotic Adventures

This volume of Unlock Adventures includes Night of the Boogeymen, Scheherazade’s Last Tale, and Expedition: Challenger.

The Night of the Boogeymen

The Night of the Boogeymen is the easiest out of Exotic Adventures, so is probably the first one a lot of people will play. The artwork is gorgeous, and the theming is spot on. The puzzles are pretty simple, but the addition of certain built-in limitations helps make up for that.

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Little William has been having restless nights recently. The poor child has been attacked by nightmarish monsters: the boogeymen. Under the cloak of darkness, you open William’s door to look for the monsters.

Scheherazade’s Last Tale

Scheherazade’s Last Tale was a fun adventure, though it’s not top of my list for puzzles. That doesn’t mean there weren’t good puzzles in there (there surely was), but the settings and the story definitely took the spotlight.

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Princess Scheherazade is in great danger. In an hour, she must tell one last story to the Sultan to save her life. Unfortunately, she is out of ideas.

Expedition: Challenger

Expedition: Challenger was unlike any other Unlock we’ve played so far. While other adventures (Tonipal’s Treasure / The Adventures of Oz) include moving around in a location, this is the first one that has made that movement part of the mechanics of the game. Time-based mechanics mean you need to think about your movement rather than running back and forth to solve puzzles as they appear. The app is also used in a new, more interactive way. Unfortunately, this new interactivity and style come at the cost of the quality of the puzzles. This feels more like a card-based version of something like Robinson Crusoe than it does an Unlock Adventure.

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A young woman knocks at the door of our PI agency. “My name is Gladys Ungerton. My friend, Ned Malone, has gone missing. You probably heard about him: he is one of the members of Prof. Challenger’s expedition!”