EXIT: Adventures on Catan

• Designers: Inka and Markus Brand
• Publisher: KOSMOS
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 1-2 hours on the box (92 minutes IRL with our group of 4)
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4rEcP3j
• Played with review copy provided by Thames&Kosmos

The EXIT series was one of the original puzzle-game franchises to hit the market when the escape room game craze took off a few years ago. To date, my family and I have been able to play all of the ones released here in the US, and this is a series that we continue to look forward to future installments. While there are many worthy competitors in the genre, the EXIT series is possibly the best known of the bunch – due in part to the initial set of games being awarded the 2017 Kennerspiel des Jahres award.

I received this EXIT adventure right near the end of 2025, and it had been awhile since our last experience with this franchise.   We did have to wait a week to make sure that everyone in our regular group was available because these escape room games (like all their other EXIT predecessors) can only be played once. Once you know the puzzle solutions, you really can’t play the game again. Additionally, the game may require you to destroy or deface some of the components, and that also makes it hard for someone else to play with a copy which has already been used.

In this game, Times are rough and life in your village is getting harder than you ever imagined it could be. One day, sailors tell you about the beautiful and fertile island of Catan. The people speak with admiration about the lush vegetation and the variety of resources. Hoping for better times, you set off with a few friends to explore this new world and build a new life. What adventures await you there? Set sail for Catan now and find out!

I will try to give my thoughts on this game, but beware – much of what I saw will be couched in generalities. As with all the other escape room game reviews, I will not spoil any of the secrets. Any details come from the box or the rules themselves.  Like almost all the earlier EXIT games (except The Catacombs of Horror), this game comes in small format box, and all the puzzle material is contained within the box. 

However, the rules specify that you will need some extra material – it recommends having paper, pens, and scissors handy. Unlike some of the other entries in the escape room game genre, this one is definitely more of a “legacy” style as the intent is that you will need to alter the components in some way in the process of solving the puzzles.

The format of the game is VERY DIFFERENT from the previous EXIT games. In this one, you’ll have a bunch of paper foldouts that have those familiar hexes on the back.  You’ll also have some resource counters. There are also a bunch of helper cards – if you’ve read the novelization of Catan – you’ll recognize this cast.  (See here for my review of the book).  It was nice to have a little bit of a different take on the format of the EXIT game.

So, when you start this game, you have only the first paper foldout which has the first puzzle. As with most puzzles in the EXIT franchise, you’re looking for a three digit answer.  You’ll then use this code in the decoder.  The outermost ring has the ten puzzle shapes. You line up your three-part answer in a column under the appropriate shape, you then look in the window to see a card number – find that card in the Answer deck, and if you see a grid on the back, you MAY have solved the puzzle correctly. Now, find the puzzle icon in the grid and that will direct you to a different card in the Answer deck.  Find that second card and see if you have solved the puzzle.

The group wins the game when they get through all of the puzzles. If, at any point, you feel like you’re stuck, you can flip over hint cards for the corresponding puzzle. There are three hints for each puzzle, with the 3rd one giving you the final answer.

It has been a long time since I’ve had an issue with the puzzles of an EXIT game, but I really dislike a few puzzles in this one.  As an amateur puzzle maker, I don’t like creating misleading puzzles.  There was one puzzle in particular in this box that you could accidentally solve upside down; and the puzzle doesn’t make it evident that you’re doing it wrong.  The first step in the upside down puzzle should have led to a dead end so that your solvers don’t spend twenty minutes trying to figure it out when a more elegant puzzle design would have made it obvious that you were barking down the wrong (upside down) tree..

Once you have finished the game, you can give your performance a rating using a chart provided in the rules. Essentially, the best rating is for finishing the game in under a 2 hours and having used zero hint cards. Your rating decreases with more time spent and more clue cards used. There is a certificate on the last page of the rules which can be filled in if you want to keep track of your successes (or failures).  We made it through this game in about 92 minutes, and we did require clues for the one puzzle that we tried to do upside down (which we felt we were unfairly led to)..

My thoughts on the game

The quality of the games remains high. Of all of the escape room/puzzle hunt games available, I still feel that the Kosmos EXIT games are my favorite. This latest series of games continues to confirm my belief that the Brands are at the top of the heap as far as this genre goes.  This one shows a bit of extra ingenuity as the format is so different from most of the predecessors in the series.

The puzzles are well constructed, and most of them are “fair” in the sense that you are given all the information that you need to solve them – with the one exception noted above. Sure, there is a bit of lateral thinking involved in solving some of the puzzles, but there is generally enough clues given to you in the game material to at least allow you to make the mental leap (if you’re able to piece together the information correctly). We found this one to be pretty standard in difficulty, and we did not require any of the clues.  There is nothing tricky about the jigsaw puzzles- you just have to be able to put them together :)  The finish on them is a bit glossy, and this does make it a bit difficult to examine the illustrations on them until you figure out the correct lighting.

I thought that there were a number of puzzles in the previous games which were very inventive and innovative, and I’m happy to say that the quality in this set remains high without repeating puzzle types. There was one puzzle which had us stuck for a bit, but once we turned things around, – we managed to make the breakthrough that we needed.  The variety of puzzle styles is also quite nice – ranging from visual to straight logic to everything else in between.  Also, this box was more crafty than most, and that was fun to do as well.

The EXIT games all have a difficulty rating on the front of the box, and this one is a 3 out of 5, the lowest difficulty rating found on the EXIT games (there has yet to be a 1 out of 5). The increased length of time for the game here is mostly due to the time it takes to solve the one dodgy puzzle.  

Unlike some of the games in the genre, these games are meant to be used only once. As the rules clearly tell you, you might need to alter the components (drawing, cutting, pasting, eating, etc.), and once you do that, it may be impossible to play that particular set again. I don’t have a problem with this at all. First, and foremost, allowing (or demanding) that you change the components opens up all sorts of possibilities with puzzle creation, and I think that the Brands have done an excellent job at this.

Now that there are over thirty EXIT games available – I think many of you will already know if you want to do these or not. If you haven’t played them yet, they can be found online fairly easily, and they are perfect for a little activity when you’re stuck at home. The amount of puzzling goodness is very high given the size constraints of the box, and I think that the overall experience of this series is the best of any of the escape room games I’ve played thus far.

Overall, my rating for the entire series is an enthusiastic I love it!

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4rEcP3j