Esc Welt Breakout Games Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review the Esc Welt puzzle box games. Each of these wooden puzzles tasks the players with deciphering clues on to how to open them. We give a few a try and let you know how they are.

When I was young, I used to enjoy reading the Encyclopedia Brown mystery stories, where the namesake of the series would solve small-stakes mysteries while being protected from the neighborhood bully, Bugs Meany, by his friend Sally Kimball. In theory, there was always a way for the reader to solve the mystery before Encyclopedia Brown revealed the answer, but I don’t think I ever did. I blamed this on the fact that the clues were impossible for a 9-year old to possibly figure out; one time the answer involved knowing that the letters “c” and “v” are adjacent on a QWERTY typewriter, another involved the fact that “a narrow flight” and “an arrow flight” sound similar. I remember those two to this day because I was so frustrated by them being unsolvable without spoilers, and when I go to college I found out that my roommate Craig was also held a bit of a grudge against the series over the “arrow flight” solution. That said, I still read all the books in the series, but it was always a little bit love/hate.

With that in mind, I decided to try my luck with some mystery puzzles from the German company, Esc-Welt. Welt is the German word for World, so the brand offers the promise of a nice escape from reality as you immerse yourself in Esc-Welt’s beautifully crafted wooded puzzles.

Esc-Welt sent me two games to review, plus a standard wooden jigsaw puzzle that was fun but nothing special. What was special were the two “escape room in a box” puzzles they sent: “Quest Pyramide” and “House of the Dragon” (both of which rated 4 out of 5 on the