It’s time for our second puzzle review for National Puzzle Month! We’re giving you a month of puzzle reviews. We’ll be covering all kinds of puzzles, so make sure you subscribe to our newsletter so you can link directly to the reviews. Today, Thames & Kosmos’s Nightfall Manor puzzle. If you don’t know already, we are big fans of Thames & Kosmos puzzles here at Gay NYC Dad. Their puzzle advent calendars are always a highlight of our year and – #spoileralert – this new escape room-type puzzle is a hit!
Thames & Kosmos’s Nightfall Manor is an escape room in a puzzle in a box. Gaston, the village storyteller, has disappeared after claiming he was going to solve the mystery of Nightfall Manor, the local castle. Our task is to track him down and find out what has happened to him. Pack your curiosity, your intuition, and your best puzzle-solving skills and let’s go!
Before I get started on the review, here is my primer on Exit the Room games:
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?
The innovation with Nightfall Manor is that there are jigsaw puzzles included in the puzzle solving. It’s the best of both worlds! There are four jigsaw puzzles, a decoder disk,14 riddle documents, 10 strange items, and the rulebook, which includes the help section. You’ll need your own scissors, pen, pencil, paper, and a clock of some sort for timing yourself (for the score at the end). You can also use the Kosmos Helper App, which has a timer in the Nightfall Manor section. The Kosmos Helper App is the best option, because it also has a soundtrack for each of the four jigsaw puzzle sections! And you can pause the timer, if you need to take a break.
The decoder disk comes as four dials that have to be assembled with a snap fastener, which, unfortunately, I dropped and stepped on, so it didn’t work correctly, but that just meant that I had to hold it together when I spun the dials. Don’t drop yours, then stop on it and you should be fine.
How to solve Thames & Kosmos’s Exit the Game Nightfall Manor:
As you follow the directions in the Rulebook, you’ll be instructed to complete the jigsaw puzzles, which are, essentially, the game board. Each of the jigsaw puzzles represents a different location on your quest to find Gaston and they’re distinguishable by the patterns on the back of the pieces.
As you journey towards Nightfall Manor, you stop at the locations on the puzzles and open different-colored combination locks by solving puzzles. When you solve the puzzle correctly, you enter the combination of the lock into the decoder dial. If you’re correct, when you turn the decoder disk over, there’s a window that has either the combination lock that you’re trying to solve or a red X. If the combination lock is in the window, there are three windows on the front of the decoder disk and each window has a symbol, which is used to determine which of the Riddle documents to open. The correct Riddle document carries your further into the story, letting you know where to go next.
TOP TIP: If you can’t figure out how to solve a puzzle, you can flip the Rulebook and turn it over to find the Help section. There are two clues per puzzle, plus a hidden solution (on the reverse of the clue page) that you can use if you can’t solve the puzzle on your own.
Continue building jigsaws and solving puzzles until you’ve completed the story and learned Gaston’s fate. If you’ve been timing yourself, stop the clock now and mark your time. In the Rulebook, there’s an Assessment table which helps you score your performance. It combines your time, whether or not you used any clues (and how many clues you used), to give you your stars. Don’t forget to include any extra stars you might have earned at the final solution (I got 2!). There’s even a certificate in the Rulebook where you can mark your results.
I LOVE Thames & Kosmos Exit the Game Nightfall Manor! Adding the jigsaw puzzles really increased the fun and the diversity of the puzzle-solving aspect of the games. Nightfall Manor is for 1-4 players, aged 10 and up. These puzzles are probably a bit too sophisticated for littles, though they might be helpful with the jigsaw puzzles, which are very well made. The box indicates a play time of 2-3 hours, but it only took me 2 hours on my own, so a team might even be able to do it in less time. The jigsaw puzzles have 88 pieces and take 15-20 minutes to build. There are three jigsaw puzzle Exit the Game puzzles in the series, so far, click the links below for my affiliate links! Hopefully, there will be more!
https://www.amazon.com/EXIT-Family-Friendly-Puzzle-Based-Experience-Collaborative/dp/B09QF42DK7/
https://www.amazon.com/Exit-Puzzles-Family-Friendly-Puzzle-Based-Experience/dp/B08TWYHFVF
https://www.amazon.com/EXIT-Lighthouse-Family-Friendly-Puzzle-Based-Experience/dp/B08TWZ7GC2
٭٭٭٭٭Highly Recommended
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