Thames & Kosmos has expanded their Exit the Game line to include a game for children: Exit the Game Kids. The first in the series (hopefully there will be more) is Jungle of Riddles. The objective is to explore a newly-discovered island to find the keys to treasure chests. Your guides are friendly, talking animals, including a toucan!
I’ve written before about Exit the Game in my review of The Hunt for the Golden Book Advent Calendar, but if you haven’t read it, here’s some background on Exit the Game. Exit the Game puzzles are escape room puzzles that come in a box. You have to work your way through the puzzles to complete the overall puzzle and Exit the Game. They’re about the size of a paperback book. My family think they’re best solved together, because we have not yet solved one where every single person didn’t make a significant contribution to discovering the solution to a puzzle. You can probably do it on your own, but it would take a lot longer and it really is gratifying to see the light bulb go off when someone realizes the way to solve the puzzle, especially when the solver is a child.
What’s in the box?
For such a small box, it contains quite a lot. The story book/instruction manual, key tokens, treasure chest tokens, the answer disk, a deck of six types of riddle cards, and seven “Strange Items.” The instruction manual is especially useful, because it not only includes the story and the instructions for how to solve the puzzle, but it also contains the answer key, in case you get stuck, and, more helpfully, a QR code that helps you download Thames & Kosmos’s free Helper app. Each type of riddle card corresponds to a different type of riddle, including Moon Shadow riddles; Binoculars riddles; Magnifying Glass riddles; Map riddles; Leaf riddles; and Hat riddles.
A quick note on the Helper app – After you download the app, you choose the game you’re playing (in this case Exit Kids: Jungle of Riddles), you can choose the Tutorial, Solution Help, or the Soundtrack. If you’re in the Tutorial mode and looking for specific help, tap the menu icon in the upper right corner and you’ll see a table of contents that will take you to the section you want (psst – the Answers are in Additional Content). In the Solution Help mode, the icons for each of the riddle puzzles are in a banner across the top of the screen, so you can click on the riddle you need help with and it will give you the correct answer. For more ambience, click on the Soundtrack button for music and jungle sounds.
How to solve Thames & Kosmos’ Exit the Game Kids Jungle of Riddles:
For each game, choose one of each type of riddle cards and set the rest aside. Keep the box empty, though, because you’ll need it for one of the types of riddles (Jungle animals in hats? Yes, please!). There is a recommended order of riddle, but any order works. The goal is to get six golden keys, one for each of the six riddles. To get the golden key, you have to solve the riddle correctly. Some are easier than others (start with the recommended order, so you can build familiarity). The answer to each riddle, though, is a set of three animals. When you’ve determined which three animals solve the riddle on the card, enter them in the answer disk, flip the disk over, and see if you got the answer correct. If you did, you’ll see a little window with a golden key in it. If you didn’t, you’ll see a red X. If you see the X, flip the answer disk back over and make sure you lined up your three animals in the right riddle category (the symbols are on the outermost ring of the answer disk).
If you did win a golden key, you can then choose one of the 9 treasure chest tokens and place your key on it to indicate that it’s been awarded already. Then continue through the rest of the riddles until you’ve solved them all. Then, you can flip over your treasure chests to find out what you won. My favorite was the chest full of candy, but that’s all I’m saying! You’ll have to find out the rest of the treasures yourself.
Top Tip: The instructions suggest that you shuffle the riddle cards by category, but the cards are large and there are only six, so you could also fan them out and let the kids pick the riddles randomly from the deck. If your kids haven’t mastered shuffling yet, this is probably a better option.
Top Tip: The Binoculars riddles is a bit difficult to see, so I took a picture of it and zoomed in to see the details.
The back of the instruction booklet has a cool feature that lets you record different details of your Jungle of Riddles adventure. Top Tip: Instead of using the “scroll” on the instruction booklet, give each of the kids their own papers to write (or draw) their answers and have them share their experience with the other players.
Thames & Kosmos’s Exit the Game Kids Jungle of Riddles is a beginner level Exit the Game set of puzzles and can be enjoyed by the whole family but there are small pieces (all paper) so if the littles want to be involved, make sure there is plenty of adult supervision. The game is designed for 1-4 players, but you could easily play with more. The age range is 5+, but because of the delicate nature of some of the cards and pieces, it might be better to have an older child or adult supervise or play with them, just to keep everything in good condition. Unlike other Exit the Game puzzles, because of the randomness of the riddles and the treasures, Exit the Game Kids Jungle of Riddles can be played multiple times. When you’ve exhausted all possibilities, you can even pass it on and it will still be playable (depending, of course, on the condition of the paper pieces).
٭٭٭٭٭Highly recommended
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