Photos provided by Trapped Puzzle Rooms
Company: Trapped Puzzle Rooms
Game: Taco Twosday
Country: USA 🇺🇸
Language: English
Type of Game: Puzzles By Mail 📬
Genre: Detective
Date Played: 2/8/2021
Difficulty (based on 4 players): 7/10
Size of Team: 2 Teams (FBI & CIA)
Time: 2-3 Hours (Approximately)
Price: $17.95 (Half), $35,90 (Whole)
We played the CIA portion of the game and our friends at "Society of Curiosities" played the FBI side of the game. You can read reviews on both the CIA and FBI side below.
🆃🅷🅴 🆂🆃🅾🆁🆈
A criminal mastermind known as "The Guaca-Mole" is planning something sketchy within the food distribution network. We must stop them! We'll need the FBI (Flour Bureau of Investigation) and CIA (Corn Intelligence Agency) to join forces in order to catch this culprit! Are you ready for your mission?
🆃🅷🅴 ❞🅻🅾🅾🅺🆂❞
Each team will receive a large Manila envelope in their mailbox. Inside you'll find an intro letter, a sealed folder, and a sealed envelope. All the operations are sealed at first and can only be opened when told to do so. Although not necessary, we did find tape was helpful for one of the puzzles.
🆃🅷🅴 🅶🅰🅼🅴 🅿🅻🅰🆈
You can play this game together in the same household or remotely over Zoom. The only rule is that whoever you choose to play with can not see your game materials and vise versa. We decided to play this over Zoom with our friends "Society of Curiosities" all the way in Hawaii.
We started by reading the intro letter together and then progressed from there. Communication is key here so make sure you read EVERYTHING in detail to the other party. Taking detail notes throughout the game was also very helpful. There were moments when we had to cheat a little as describing a shape or direction could get quite confusing.
There's a web address that you should open at the start of the game. This will serve as a guide as it'll tell you what both teams will be looking for. Each team should open their own website and put in the same solutions to move forward. The nudging hint system is also on the website. The hints were quite helpful and if you really can't figure it out, you can always check the solution.
🆃🅷🅴 🅿🆄🆉🆉🅻🅴🆂
The puzzles were a lot of fun. We love the puns that were embedded into the puzzles. There were 5 puzzles in total. The beginning ones were not as difficult but we definitely had to use a hint on the last puzzle. We would've never thought a piece of paper could create something like this so this puzzle definitely gave us that "wow" moment. At the same time, it was hard to visualize without a starting point so we used a hint for this one.
There might be a puzzle that you have to search some information on the internet. Good thing we had some trivia geeks on the team so we did great in this category. This was one of our favorite puzzles as we loved how they utilized a tool that we've seen in normal puzzle games and transformed it into something of their own. The "mechanism" was able to act as a "transmitter" for the two teams.
You can solve the puzzles in this game in two ways. One: inform each party on what you have and then take the information and solve your parts separately. Two: work on the whole case together and help each other with their puzzles as well. We found that some puzzles were easier to work on separately where others you have to do it as a team.
🅲🅻🅾🆂🅸🅽🅶 🆃🅷🅾🆄🅶🅷🆃🆂
What a cool concept! We've played digital games where two teams were able to see a different interface and have to communicate with each other to solve puzzles but this is the first time we saw this type of game design in a tabletop game. We love to see more of these types of games as it's quite difficult to have guests over during the pandemic and this is such a great way to enjoy a tabletop game with friends and family. Hopefully there'll be some karaoke and charade elements added to the next game design?
FBI Side of the game Review
Michelle R.
Taco Twosday starts off with a laughter inducing briefing of our mission: To stop Guaca-mole from stealing all of the guacamole in the world! And then we were off - to fight crime as two teams via Zoom.
THEME
I loved the novel theme of the game. It is lighthearted with package names that center around taco ingredients. My favorite was the onion puzzle because it looked like an onion but the shredded cheese and lettuce came in a close second for theme.
TEAMWORK
Taco Twosday bills itself as a teamwork game and it delivers. Every puzzle depends on two teams collaborating to solve the mission. That being said, we played the game in one sitting and that much teamwork had our side tired by the end of the two hours. I’d highly recommend breaking this game into the three parts. You’ll get about three one hour-ish puzzle sessions. A lot of bang for your buck! Trapped has designed the game so it can be stopped and picked up again at the end of each puzzle - there are cute little business cards with a website of the specific puzzle start page to help.
There were a variety of challenges for the team. All of them relied heavily on communication as you technically are not allowed to show your items to the other team (I cheated a few times...shhh…) I absolutely loved half of the puzzles but the other half were a little longer and more involved than my preference - but they have great hints - so if you’re like me and need a mental break from time to time, you are well supported.
PUZZLES
The teamwork aspect definitely upped the difficulty level of the puzzles. You aren’t just solving but talking back and forth to discern what you have and what you need to do. I actually think I would have enjoyed one of the puzzles more if I didn’t have to communicate and had all the info in front of me - but once again, there are wonderful hints should you need it. This same puzzle had a wonderful Aha! Moment after we realized an element that had eluded us.
There were a few stand out puzzles that really impressed me with the puzzle mechanisms and a few that I felt were a little vaguer than I’d like - this might come from having a bit of information to sort through to figure out what to do first. One puzzle towards the end was my favorite design wise but I got so stuck because I wasn’t understanding how to use one of the physical items. A clue helped immensely but I’m not sure I would have gotten there without help - but I’m totally fine using hints freely - so this didn’t diminish the novelty of the puzzle at all.
OVERALL IMPRESSIONS
I loved how Taco Twosday carried their fun theme throughout. I could see their care and creativity throughout the game and enjoyed being surprised at their innovation in puzzles.
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 Trapped Puzzle Rooms for providing us with a sample of their game. Although a complimentary experience was generously provided, it does not impact our opinion on the review whatsoever.
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