Unlock! Exotic Adventures set (The Night of the Boogeyman, Scheherazade’s Last Tale, Expedition: Challenger)
- Designer: Cyril Demaegd
- Publisher: Space Cowboys
- Players: 1+
- Ages: 14
- Time: 60-75 min each
- Times played: 1 each with review copy provided by Asmodee NA
The Unlock! franchise was one of the first to hit the scene in the escape room/puzzle game genre. The initial editions of the game were highly anticipated – prior to Unlock! The Formula – the majority of the puzzle games came in big sized boxes (see T.I.M.E Stories, Escape Room: The Game, etc), and getting a small format was super cool. Since then, the EXIT series as well as the Deckscape series have also provided more portable versions of these puzzle-y games.
This set is now the fourth triad of games (with at least a fifth one being semi-advertised on the app!). They still are in the same small format box, and they still follow the same general format. I have liked the way that there are multiple different franchises in the genre, and each of them brings their own style to the party.
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10 Great Roll ‘n Writes (Article by Chris Wray)
The “roll ‘n write” genre is having a moment. Though the mechanic has existed for quite some time — I’d (perhaps controversially) describe Yahtzee as a roll ‘n write — the number of new title available has exploded in the past couple of years. As a genre, Roll ‘n Writes tend to be easy to learn, inexpensive, and fast paced, all factors that explain their popularity.
Today’s article is the start of a new series that features 10 great games in a given subcategory. I pick a mechanic, theme, publisher, etc. Then we here at the Opinionated Gamers all vote behind the scenes to create a list of 10 great games that meet the criteria. We’ll try to do an article a month, and I’d love your suggestions about future lists. The next article in the series will be 10 Great Knizia Games.
The Methodology
For purposes of this project, I simply asked everybody to vote for 10 great roll ‘n writes. I made no attempt to offer a definition. Each member of the OG was offered the chance to vote for up to 10 games. They could give one game a 15, one game a 14, one game an 13, all the way down to giving one game a 6. We all put our votes into a spreadsheet. Any OG writer could add games, provided that they were willing to give it a vote. We then added up the points for each game and picked the top 10.
We had 16 OG-ers vote, and 38 different games received votes. To get on the list took a minimum of seven writers rating the game decently well. That wasn’t a rule, but rather how the breakdown naturally worked out. There’s actually great consensus towards the top of our list.
Without further ado, here are the 10 great roll ‘n writes!
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