Identity Games - "Escape Room The Game - Da Vinci's Telescope"

Photos above are property of Identity Games

Company: Identity Games (Distributed in North America by Kroeger inc.)

Game: Escape Room The Game: Da Vinci's Telescope

Country: Netherlands 🇳🇱

Language: English

Type of Game: Puzzles By Mail 📬

Genre: Mystery

Date Played: August 28, 2021

Difficulty (based on 2 players): 7/10

Size of Team: Unlimited (Suggested 3-5 Players, ages 16+)

Time: Unlimited (but there is a 60 Min. timer running)

Price: $12.99

While studying many of Leonardo da Vinci’s artifacts, collector Sam Anoli has come across an undiscovered item, Da Vinci's telescope. Stories say that hidden in Da Vinci’s different works is the key to using the telescope and when used to look at the solar eclipse, will reveal a secret that will help humanity in the future. Unfortunately, the next eclipse happens in one hour. Known for your reputation as the “Escape Room Champions”, he has recruited you and your team to go through his works and get the telescope ready for the eclipse.

This is an expansion to the Escape Room: The Game series so it requires the base game (or at least the Chrono Decoder and the keys) to play. Opening the box, you will get 3 envelopes labelled Part 1, 2 and 3 that will be opened in consecutive order as you play, as well as some hint cards, which you may need the Hint Decoder from the base game to view.

Photos above are property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

To progress through each envelope, you will need to put the correct 4 keys into the Chrono Decoder, which has one of 8 different characteristics. Once you are ready, you can start the time on the Chrono Decoder, and it will countdown from 60 mins but don’t worry. It will count back up if you go past so play however you feel.

This game did a great job on using many of Da Vinci’s well known (and not so well known) artwork and inventions with the game as well as stylizing the artwork to fit the era. The narrative on each envelope was also well written and added to the game. As you progressed, Sam Anoli would continue to make appearances, offering clues and comments to help you on your way.

We did find there was one confusing aspect of the game though. At the start, the goal of the game was to reveal the secret of the telescope, but in the end, revealing the secret only gave you the answer to one key. This was a little anticlimactic as we revealed the secret, only to realize we still had to find more information afterwards.

There were a good mix of easier and more difficult puzzles with a few we got right away and a few that had us scratch our heads for a bit. Our advice would be to use everything at your disposal. There were a few times we did not realized certain items could be used to solve the puzzle.

We found there was one puzzles in this game that was very color specific. We are both red-green colorblind so this one was a little difficult to maneuver. We were able to get enough of the answer to determine the solution though.

If you ever get stuck, there are the hint cards that can be used with the “Hint Decoder” to help you along. The hint cards suggest you look at them every 5 mins but feel free to look at them at your own leisure. If those hints are not enough, you can also go to their website and there is a walkthrough available which you are check out or even at the end, you can check out the walkthrough to see if you have missed anything. There were a few puzzles that required folding to solve so if you get this game used and want to play with some untouched puzzle pieces, you can check out their website to download some new pieces.

Photos above are property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

If you are a fan of Leonardo Da Vinci, you are in for a treat with this game as there are many real references to him in this game (which you can learn more about in the Walkthrough document). As we went through each envelope, we felt like Robert Langdon from Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code”, researching and sifting through many of Da Vinci’s works, finding hidden messages and cryptic notes. Overall, we had a great experience diving into this mystery and solving the puzzles to discover Da Vinci’s secret, which isn’t a real message since this is just a game...right?

Check out our interview with the creators to understand more on the development side of the game:

(If you do decide to try this game, give us a shoutout or tag us on social media so we know you heard it from "ESCAPETHEROOMers"!)

#MatthewLui #AtHomeGames #PuzzlesByMail #Mystery #IdentityGames #Netherlands