Bamboozle Brothers - "Scooby-Doo!: The Haunted Mansion" & "The Shining: The Overlook Hotel"
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Bamboozle Brothers - "Scooby-Doo!: The Haunted Mansion" & "The Shining: The Overlook Hotel"




Photos provided by Bamboozle Brothers (Manufactured by The OP)

Company: Bamboozle Brothers (Manufactured by The OP)

Country: USA 🇺🇸

Language: English

Type of Game: Puzzles By Mail 📬

Date Played: 4/13/2021

Size of Team: 1+ Players

Time: 120 Minutes (Approximately)

 

Game: Scooby-Doo™: Escape from the Haunted Mansion – A Coded Chronicles® Game

Genre: Adventure, Mystery

Difficulty (based on 2 players): 5/10

Ages: 12+

Price: $24.49


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As the Mystery, Incorporated gang travels into the night on a dark and winding road, their van suddenly breaks down. There's no where to go on this stormy night except for the creepy mansion that so happen to appear before their eyes. The butler slowly opens to door and warns the gang that the mansion is haunted. Just when the gang decides to escape, the door locks behind them...


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This beautifully illustrated game came with 5 narrative books, 13 map tiles, 60 clue cards, 8 secret envelopes, 1 chapter two envelope, 5 character standees, and 1 mystery manual.

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There are 5 characters in this game: Velma, Shaggy, Daphne, Scooby and Fred. Each of them has their own dialogue book. Ideally, it would have been great to have 5 players so each could take on a role but since there's only 2 of us, we took on multiple roles. Each of the characters has a certain ability (research, eat, use, smell and investigate).


The instructions will inform the players on a starting point (backstory) and a map tile. As you go through the game, the characters will help you discover more map tiles and hidden clues. The clue cards has either 1, 2 or 3 digits on the images. By using the combination method of the first digit on the character's card with the map tiles and clue card numbers, you are able to explore and solve puzzles throughout the game. The simplest way to check if you are doing the right thing is to make sure that the solution codes are all 4 digit number. Once that's established, you'll be able to find and read the codes in one of the character's dialogue books. If your answer is correct, you'll be given the next instruction. If it's wrong, your journey might just end there and you'll have to go back to the previous step to find the right path to take. These instructions were easy for us to understand since we've played games that have similar type of game design like "Escape Tales". But if you've played escape rooms before, you may also be able to relate to the game play style as many involved "search and find", discovering hidden doors, etc...If you don't want to read the instructions, there's a video explanation on their website. This is where you'll be able to find how to repackage the game as well. Although it was quite nice the game was instructing the players to repack as we're playing the game.


You'll get to a point where it's the end of Chapter 1 and if you like to take a break then you can save the tiles you have in your hands at that point into the chapter two envelope. This was quite thoughtful of the creators. We decided to push forward to Chapter 2 and completed the game in one shot.

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Make sure you have a good amount of table space when you are playing this game. The map tiles will keep expanding along with the number of clue cards. At certain times, you may be able to get rid of some clue cards based on the game's instructions. Hints were printed in the back of the instruction booklet. This part actually was more "puzzly" than the puzzles themselves. It would be nice if the hints were just printed separately in another booklet along with more detailed explanation on the solutions. If you decide to play the competitive way then for every hint you take, you'll need to cross off one of the Scooby snacks (20 in total). At the end of the game, you can score yourself by seeing how many snacks you have left in your possession.


The puzzles were a lot of fun in this game. There were various hidden symbols, items and entry ways that we had to discover throughout the mansion. The way we're supposed to associate how a certain prop should be used in order to open a locked item or door felt very escape room like. One of my favorite moments was when Daphne and Fred was locked up in adjacent room and the only way to open that wall between them was by communicating with each other. One other thing I really enjoyed doing is opening these secret envelopes. They were full of surprises and it was interesting to see how they could be utilized on the map tiles and clue cards.

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Since there's no penalty in trying out different character's abilities with various items on the map tile, we each took on multiple characters but were testing out the solutions at the same time. This made the game play really confusing as we were collecting many clue cards simultaneously and wasn't sure if we made a mistake at one point or not. I strongly advise not to play this way. Each player should take turns and collect items one at a time. One useful hint I want to give to everyone is that you should definitely try every ability just incase you miss out on collecting some of the clue cards. Sometimes it might not seem like that ability would go with that item but you never know.


One shortcoming for this game design is the fact that if you missed out on collecting a clue card or somehow skipped an envelope, it's hard to back track where you had done that. It would be great if the game designers could add clearer instructions on the hint section (for instance on this puzzle, what clue cards and map tiles should you have in our hands). It would make the game play much smoother.


I love the graphics in this game. It's vibrant yet eerie at the same time. It immediately bought back memories of "Scooby Doo, Where Are you!" series. It's one of my favorite cartoons to watch when I was young and even till this day, I still leave it on if it so happens to pop up on my screen. Brandon was a lot more into the character than I was though. After the game, he was literally talking to me in "Ruh-roh--RAGGY!!!" language for almost 2 hours...

 

Game: The Shining: Escape from the Overlook Hotel – A Coded Chronicles® Game

Genre: Horror

Difficulty (based on 2 players): 8/10

Ages: 17+

Price: $27.00


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Jack has gone mad and his wife Wendy has knocked him unconscious and locked him up in the pantry of the creepy Overlook hotel. She must find her son Danny before Jack wakes up so they can escape from this mad man!


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This chilling adventure game included 4 journals, 4 room tiles, 44 clue cards, 2 character standees, 11 secret envelopes, 1 hotel guest guide and 1 act two envelope.

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The game play is very similar to Scooby-Doo™: Escape from the Haunted Mansion (refer up for detailed game play) except for a few differences:

  1. There's much less space to explore (only 4 room tiles)

  2. Since there's only three characters (Wendy, Danny, Jack), each will have more than one ability (look, shine, use). Some characters may even combine their abilities in the latter part of the game.

  3. The introduction of Jack cards and Mr. Torrance cards bought the game to another level in of difficulty. Jack could potentially stop a character's actions and disturb the game play.

  4. If you want to score yourself, you'll need to count the number of unscripted endings that you've encountered. If your game ended abruptly due to your solution choice, you can go back and choose another answer and hopefully be able to continue on with the game.

If you don't want to read the instructions, there's a video explanation on their website. This is where you'll be able to find how to repackage the game as well.

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The puzzles felt much less coherent in this game than the Scooby-Doo™: Escape from the Haunted Mansion. We got lost right at the beginning and was never able to back track or continue from that point on. The hints were not helpful as it didn't really explain the solution and some were incorrectly printed. I strongly suggest reading this errata before starting the game. Similar to the issue in the first game, the hint system was very confusing. Since we weren't able to figure out how a solution was achieved from the hints, we didn't know what clue cards or tiles we were suppose to have for the next scene. At times we would have missing cards or extra cards that were not relating to the scene that we're on.

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Due to the issues with the print errors, we focused more on the narrative side of this game. I really liked the creativity side on the usage of "shine" as an ability on certain puzzles that went along the lines of being able to see through or sense things. This could've definitely been a really strong narrative type of game but fell short due to the above reasons. More play testing could have definitely avoided these issues. I am a big supporter for popular IPs being made into escape games/rooms so I definitely want to see more games from A Coded Chronicles® Game but just with more preparation and care this time.

 

Check out our interview with the creators to understand more on the development side of these 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"!)


Disclosure: We thank Bamboozle Brothers (Manufactured by The OP) for providing us with a sample of this game. Although complimentary experience was generously provided, it does not impact our opinion on the review whatsoever.


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