Matthew BaileyGame 14# of the “Now & Then Summer Marathon 2024” is “Escape from the Aquarium” played By Jack(9) Toby(6) and Henry(3) (who were actually 8,5 & 2 when we started)
This is a bit of a weird review in that I actually played the majority of “Escape from the Aquarium” with the boys about three months ago. Due to a number of reasons that you’ll see below, we were unable to complete it at that time. I was waiting for a moment when we could finish it before writing my final review. As such, I’m not sure that time is ever going to come, so we dug it out today, finished it off, and here we go.
“Escape from the Aquarium” is an escape-from-tile game designed for kids, as it quite clearly says on the front of the box. The general concept is you have been turned into a fish in an aquarium, and you are trying to escape by unlocking ingredients to make a potion to break the spell by going to four different zones in the aquarium.
The escape room for kids genre isn’t actually as crowded as it could be, with the rather good “Detective Society” games being notable exceptions that we looked at a few months ago.
Sadly, “Escape from the Aquarium” does not quite live up to this standard for a number of different reasons.
Without giving too much away, one of the key issues is that essentially everything is available for you to begin with. All four zones can be opened up, and you’ve got all of the bits of information in front of you that you really need to solve any puzzle in any order. This essentially makes it a puzzle book with interestingly laid-out shapes. Nothing is unlocked, nothing is hidden, and there aren’t any sealed envelopes or anything like that, which gives it a bit of an anti-climactic feel from the start.
There are some pretty decent puzzles, but again, these are ones that could quite easily be inside of a book.
Unfortunately, I never actually got a chance to do all of the puzzles as I was missing one of the pieces inside the box. Additionally, the wheel I had was quite considerably damaged upon arrival, and it had clearly been through a hard time in the factory.
As we were unable to finish the game, it sat on the back burner. I contacted Professor Puzzle Games to raise my concerns. They apologized and said they would send a replacement piece so that I could complete the last puzzle, but that was quite a while ago, and unfortunately, the replacement piece never came. As such, we dug out the game today and finished the last bit of it just for the sake of me being able to do an actual review. To be honest, at this point, it was all rather anti-climactic anyway.
If you are looking for an escape room for kids, I would recommend checking out the “Detective Society” games, which I reviewed back in February.
They were great and you got 3 in the box… this one just isn’t worth it.
Disclaimer: “Escape from the Aquarium” was kindly provided by “Professor Puzzle” for the purpose of review. Our thoughts and opinions are, however, our own.
