ThinkFun Escape the Room The Cursed Dollhouse – An Escape Room Experience in a Box for Ages 13 and Up (7353)

This was a great game. First one bought of this kind and will buy the others. If you are used to playing these kinds of games you will have an advantage but it doesn't mean it will be easy. Some of the challenges were pretty tuff. We managed to get through the game without looking at any hints, but when we were done and went through the clues found out we got the right answer on some challenges by accident, which made it even funnier. All in all I was a great value and I want to say bravo to the inventors, it was well thought out and the way it was laid out was super cool and creative. looking forward to doing more.

We did Dr Gravely's by ThinkFun and really enjoyed it, so I bought this one because it's a nice idea. In practice, it is awful. Puzzles are obscure, things attached that are removable often damage the box when you're removing them, and it's impossible to see well inside the assembled dollhouse, so we ended up taking it apart. We love Exit The Game and this just pales in comparison. I am glad I got it on sale because I feel ripped off enough. I would hate to have paid full price for this painful experience. I think it's shame that all the ThinkFun escape game reviews are lumped together like they are here because I suspect if this had standalone reviews the star rating would be quite low. Disappointing--just don't even bother. I think they didn't even really play test it because they could have made the house design so much easier to play if they had bothered.

This escape room system is definitely challenging, but it is also fiddly. Some of the puzzles just did not line up quite right even though we knew what to do to solve them. Others involved some giant leaps of logic, and one we skipped by without missing anything else. Those criticisms aside, it was fun to do. We also tried our best to rebuild it so that other people can try to solve it again without being influenced by our work.

The pandemic has had my family playing more of this escape room type games: The Exit series, the unlock series, escape room in a box, etc. This is my first venture into the Think Fun Series.Replayability: First off, this game is only one experience, so the same play group can't play it again without knowing the answers. Secondly, they say this game is replayable for another group, but it only is in the sense that you can reprint materials online after (which is available on their website). Beating the game requires you to fold, disassemble, and otherwise modify the contents. I dont have a good color printer that could replicate the quality of this for another group, so I ended up treating this more like a one time experience like the exit series and i'll likely be tossing this afterward.Puzzling Experience: I think doing this as our first Think Fun Experience might have been a bad choice. We spent a good amount of time just trying to get used to the system of using their decoder wheel, which isn't all that bad, but still took time. Lots of moments we would find things in one room that wouldnt have relevance until a later time in the game. My family and I found lots of the puzzles frustrating, but perhaps that speaks more to our puzzle skills than the puzzle itself. Definitely be prepared to look around the rooms and connect the dots between the different things presented -- i felt some of the ties of the clues to the solution were kind of weak.Gameplay evolves like this: you start in the living room and have to find 3 symbols that are associated with the colors red, green, and blue. Once you do, you place those symbols and the colors into the wheel and if you're correct, the wheel will show you two matching symbols of the room you're in, saying you can progress the story. You then move to different rooms around the house in the same manner until you've explored the whole house and can complete the story. Personally, we found all the puzzles in the bathroom the most challenging. When we looked up the solutions, we wondered how you would even know to execute some of those solutions, as there didn't seem to have enough hints to guide you in that direction.Either way, i'll likely stick to the unlock & exit series. Their puzzles seemed a little more logical. They also pack more experiences for less money (Unlock is 3 experiences for $30, Exit is $15 each, and this is $40 for the singular experience at time of review).

We tried the Cursed Dollhouse game and really loved it. At first, I balked at the extra price, but now I understand why it’s pricier than Dr Gravely’s Retreat and Stargazer Manor. It’s an actual buildable dollhouse, and you explore rooms and discover clues one room at a time. There are a lot of props, too, which adds to your set of clues and to the experience. We’ve played Dr Gravely’s Retreat before and liked it, but felt it was pretty easy. This one is a bit harder; we had to use our brains, but didn’t really get stuck too much. This game has a lot more atmosphere, and a good balance between storyline and puzzling. We spent about 4 hours with two people, and didn’t use their hint system. I wish they’d make another! I was so sorry when it was done. Definitely worth the price.EDIT: We played Stargazer’s Manor a few weeks later. Having heard it was easy, we gave it to our kids (ages 5 & 9). They finished it without help from us in 70 minutes. Very fun and kid-friendly, but quite easy.

The ThinkFun escape room games are very high quality and very well-designed. This particular one is very hard, and may not be for everyone. The official online clue system is helpful though. Also, the puzzles are physically small, so if you have more than two or three people, it could be tricky for everyone to participate.