Thames & Kosmos Exit the Game Kids Riddles in Monsterville Spoiler-free Review!
Thames & Kosmos has expanded Exit the Game Kids line! The first in the series was Jungle of Riddles (see my review here) The second in the series is Riddles in Monsterville. The monsters are cookie monsters and they’ve stolen all of the cookie jars. Our mission is to track down the monsters and get back our cookie jars.
Here’s a quick explanation of how Exit the Game puzzles work. Exit the Game puzzles are escape room puzzles that come in a box. You work your way through a series of puzzles that lead you to solve the overall puzzle and Exit the Game. The boxes are about the size of a paperback book, so you can easily travel with them, though be sure you’ve got all the tools you need to solve the puzzles. 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?
Included in the box, which is decorated with adorable monsters are: the story book/instruction manual, key tokens, cookie jar tokens, the answer disk, a deck of six types of riddle cards, and 21 “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 Smiley riddles; Snail Trail riddles; Outline riddles; Favorite Food riddles; Jigsaw Puzzle riddles; and Lasso riddles. One of the cookie jar tokens has an empty cookie jar, so you can draw your own treasure to keep in the cookie jar. Fun!
TOP TIP: Keep the smaller pieces in a Ziploc bag so you don’t lose them. It’ll also help keep them in good condition.
A quick note on the Helper app – After you download the app, you choose the game you’re playing (in this case Exit Kids: Riddles in Monsterville), you can choose the Tutorial, Cookie Jar Riddle, Solutions, 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. In the Solutions 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.
A fun addition to this game is the Cookie Jar Riddle. When you’ve finished a round of the game and have retrieved all six of your cookie jars, you can enter those in the Cookie Jar Riddle section of the app to learn which monsters stole your cookie jars. There’s even a new puzzle to solve here, because the monsters give you clues to which jar they took, so you get to solve that riddle, too.
How to solve Thames & Kosmos’ Exit the Game Kids Riddles in Monsterville
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 the Snail Trail and Outline riddles. There is a recommended order of riddle, but any order works. The goal is to get six monster keys, one for each of the six riddles. To get the monster 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 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 monster 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 card symbols are on the outermost ring of the answer disk).
If you did win a monster key, place the key on one of the 10 cookie jar tokens. Continue through the rest of the riddles until you’ve solved all six (one of each type of riddle). Once you’ve unlocked six of the cookie jars, you can flip them over to find out what was hidden inside. For extra fun, after you’ve completed the game, play the Cookie Jar Riddle, described above, in the app.
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.
The back of the instruction booklet has a cool feature that lets you record different details of your Riddles in Monsterville adventure.
Top Tip: Instead of using the designated space 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 Riddles in Monsterville 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 Riddles in Monsterville 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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