When it comes to classic cartoons, there are few that stack up the gang that traveled around in the Mystery Mobile. Scooby-Doo and company were one of my favorite cartoons as a kid, and I have had a blast introducing them to the next generation down in my kiddos as they grew up. But what if you could be one of the gang yourself? What if you could be a sleuth on the team, helping to solve the mystery and catch that bad guy? Will look no further, because we have the way for you to do just that!
Scooby-Doo and the Escape from the Haunted Mansion is a new game from The OP. Designed by Jay Cormier and Sen-Foong Lim and Illustrated by Rob Lundy. It plays 1-5 people or a group of more if you would like. Playtime is 1-2 hours.
Overview
Escape from the Haunted Mansion is a “Coded Chronicles Game” in which players work together to solve the mystery as they each take on different roles. In this adventure, the team of Mystery, Inc attempt to solve the mystery of Lady Fairmont’s ghost!
Gameplay
First off, this is an escape room/puzzle game so I want to emphasize that there will be NO SPOILERS in the pictures or descriptions of this game, but I will try to give you the best review of it to make an informed decision.
Each player will take a Narrative book representing one of the characters, or some players may need to take more than one based on player count. There is a stack of Map tiles that are placed face down, and a deck of clue cards that are also placed faced-down. Each of the characters has a standee that is sat to the side. Also the Secret Envelopes are put off of the side as well.
The game will direct you to the stack of map tiles on the table throughout the experience. These map tiles will represent rooms in the Mansion and fit in a certain order as they are revealed. Each character comes in and out of the story at different times. At different moments in the adventure these characters can move in and out of any room with unlocked doors. The different Mystery, Inc personalities all have unique abilities that will come in handy as their expertise throughout the adventure. Each character has a number and you match them up to different items and locations on the map and sometimes use them with different items in combination to create a 4 digit code that you can look up in your narrative book for clues and continued aspects of the adventure.
There are also some hints through the game if you need them as you play and get stuck at any point. One of the more unique aspects of the game are the Scooby Snacks which you must “eat one” when you make a mistake or miss a clue or card. The amount of these you have left will determine your overall score for the game.
Impressions:
Things that could be better:
Text. There is a lot of text in this and if you are playing with younger players or players who don’t like to read, they may not be as interested with getting into that aspect of it. I would recommend turning those parts over to the players who are more comfortable with the reading or enjoy it to really help keep the game going.
Replay. There is no replayability with this one, and that’s how it is made but it definitely leaves you feeling like you wish you had another adventure to play!
Things we liked:
Theme. Who doesn’t love Scooby-Doo and the whole Mystery, Inc gang? This game gave you the full immersion of that theme and made you feel like you were right there in the mix with them solving a caper.
Design. The game is a great throwback to the original cartoon series and I really loved the style of the artwork on the game boards and cards as it really showcased that look. The characters, rooms, items-it all was a great callback to the series.
Gameplay. This game was just challenging enough for our group without being frustrating. I think that is a really hard line to tow for adventure/exit games in a box like this and they did it well. I felt challenged by the gameplay but not so much that it became a negative thing in the game.
Overall
The escape room experience of this game might be one of the best I have ever played for the higher player count we used. Games like Exit and Unlock are great, but when there are more than two or three people playing it feels like a few work on the puzzle while everyone else is left staring at them. Scooby-Doo allows for multiple people to take on a role of one of the members of the Mystery Inc and that is my favorite part. You can have multiple people all engaged with their respective characters while also trying to solve the overall questions being posed. It felt like the best team driven experience I have ever had in a board game. We were all working together well, doing our own roles but at the same time making sure everyone else was on top of theirs.
The puzzles in this game are just that right amount of challenge for what I personally enjoy in a boxed escape room/adventure game. They are solvable based on the information you have but are not so incredibly easy that you just fly through it. Each player had a hand in the progression of the problem-solving aspects of the game but it didn’t feel like one person was controlling it. That being said I think it would still work well for a solo player to go through it. I really liked that you didn’t have to think way outside the box as in literally out of the box in finding clues/information to proceed. It was all laid out very nicely and compact which makes for an easier play but also in my opinion a more enjoyable experience especially when playing with younger gamers.
Thematically this game sings. The characters all bring their best traits to the table, as in Scooby tasting everything and Velma investigating all the same things. Certain characters had better abilities when it came to an object or person that you interacted with in the game, and unless you ran everything by the characters that made sense you might miss a thing or two. But I loved the way the interacted with each other in-game and I especially loved how thematic our group kept it, as Scooby tried to tasty anything he could and Shaggy played up the frightened braveness well. Well done on a design level and equally well done with the players I gamed with. I think you need both to be real good for the game to reach that higher level success experience and I am glad we got there!
The drawbacks to a game like this is once you are done, you are done with it. There aren’t a bunch of different modes and experiences for it as of right now, but I think anything that would use this would require you to buy an all new set of product wither way. That being said, it is a great game to gift or move on to another family since they can have the same experience once it is all put back together. Nothing is destroyed or marked up, so it is easy to reset the game.
Overall I could not get enough of this adventure in a box! We played through both the first and second halves of the game in one sitting, it took us approximately and hour for each half. I would highly recommend this one to any families looking for a great game experience together as you join together to solve the mystery and escape from the Haunted Mansion!
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