So, I am sure this is the real reason you are here. You need to know what the puzzles are like correct? You need to know how difficult they are, if they are suitable for children, and whether or not you need to eat your Weetabix first. Well, let us explore this in a little depth. The EXIT: Advent Calendar, designed by Inka and Markus Brand and published by KOSMOS, allows you to bring all the excitement and fun of escape rooms to your home this Christmas. With 24 puzzles to solve and a playtime of 24 days – that’s right! – this advent calendar brings the gift of adventure for the whole of December. Straight off the bat I will say that I absolutely adored the concept behind this product. Getting a tiny little chocolate each morning leading up to Christmas is all good with standard advent calendars if you are a kid (or big kid). But when you get older the chocolate just doesn’t give you the same buzz of excitement that it once did. Exit’s Advent Calendar is an incredibly interesting activity for yourself, or to do with the family. Note Tis the season to be………PUZZLED! Haha Nope, we at Zatu aren’t inventing a new holiday (although how cool would Board Gamesmas be?!). We are risking the naughty list and taking a sneaky peek at the Hunt for the Golden Book Advent Calendar devised by KOSMOS who shall henceforth be known as Father Enigmas! Haha Okay, so probably only in my mind, but still……… Is It Time Yet Although we are still a little way off Christmas yet, it is never too soon to plan. And after the pumpkins of Halloween have been turfed on to the compost heap, and the fireworks have finished, it’s a straight run to the most wonderful time of the year!

As is evident, I love writing, and inherently with that, I love reading. This Exit Calendar had plenty of story for me to sink my teeth into. It is clear that a lot of effort was placed on this side of the game, as the story goes hand in hand with gameplay incredibly well. The writing also has the perfect tone that will allow younger players to understand what is happening, whilst also providing an interesting story for older readers to get into. The intro chapter is a little long compared to all the others for obvious reasons. The main chapters are all the perfect length to provide you with a setting and scenario for the puzzle to follow and is wrote in a way that would be easy to read out for the family if they are also involved.I was impressed by the variety of puzzle types and the fact that they managed to make the rooms, and even the box itself part of some of the puzzles. The fact that there is so much diversity of puzzles means that no matter your skill level, there will be some that you can do in a breeze, and some that will take some brain juice. This will make the experience different for most people and make it a great talking piece between people. It’s cold. Very cold. The avalanche rushed you unexpectantly and now you are trapped within an icy cave. A cave that will inevitably become your wintery tomb if you cannot find a way out. You are alone and it will be days before anybody can find you, and of course, your phone can’t grab a signal down here. Ahead of you lays 24 riddles and puzzles to overcome before the chilling grasp of death embodies you. Will you overcome this challenge and find your way out? or succumb to your fate? Come and find out. A new challenge awaits you every morning on the run up to Christmas with Exit The Game: Advent Calendar.

And (think of this as a Christmas gift rather than a spoiler) the box is an essential part of the puzzle! So don’t be thinking you can solve this special hunt with only what is inside each window! If you do, you’ll be waiting forever to find out where the Golden Book has gone! And nobody wants that because whose book is it? That’s right! It belongs to Santa Claus. And you don’t want to be the agent of Christmas disappointment for all the children, now do you??! Father Enigmas’ Little HelperMy only issue with the writing, along with my issue with the puzzles, is that at one point it got a little ‘meta’. At one point in the story, other Exit games are mentioned. This took me out of the story a little as I saw it as a plug for other products. This of course would not phase younger players though. The Components One for the miniatures fans out there, or simply those who want to play a game at Christmas, as each day in this Mantic Games advent calendar brings you one step closer to having everything you need for a festive game of tavern mayhem. That includes six special limited edition hand cast resin models that are festive themed, which consist of four players, the barkeep and his bouncer, plus the terrain and game tokens. The downside is that you can’t do anything with the calendar innately until Christmas, but it does keep the joy alive for a ready-to-go Christmas Day game. For example, and this won’t come as a surprise to Exit fans, knowing which window to open next can only be determined by correctly solving the puzzle from the day before! So, when they say “hunt”, they really mean it! When you solve a puzzle, you’ll reveal a code, and it is this code that gives directions to the next window’s location! Meta mind bendiness or what?! Selection Box Thankfully, for us at least, the box also comes with a book of hints (and solutions!). Cleverly, as with the Exit games, you can sneak a look at one or two clues to help you along without revealing the entire solution. And I am woman enough to admit that we did have to get Father Enigmas’s little helper to see us on our way to one or two (ok 5 but who’s counting?!). Final Thoughts

Personally, I went into this game with a bit of an ignorant expectation. I have not played any Exit games prior to this, (although this will now be changing very soon) and was expecting the effort to have only been placed on the puzzles and gameplay aspects. I was very pleasantly wrong. Exit the Game: Advent Calendar is a brilliantly constructed project. It is fun to play through and provides you with varying types of puzzles that can be done as a family. This provided me with many smiles, many head scratching moments, and only one or two gripes. It is much bigger than I expected it to be! Each EXIT Advent Calendar is an EXIT game and a 24-day-long adventure in one. Each door in the calendar reveals a unique room containing an exciting new riddle. Solve one day’s riddle to determine which door to open the next day. These games are completely card-based and unplugged. They include a decoder board, riddle book, and riddle cards.From the door you just completed, you follow the arrows indicated as a path towards the next door, and (brilliantly!) the shapes then act as a sort of ‘key’. If you have solved the puzzle correctly, then the door the path leads you to, will correspond with the shape sequence on your decoder. If they do not match, then you have either not completed the puzzle correctly, or you have done something wrong. Then, if they do match, then well done! You have smashed the puzzle or riddle, and you can now write the next number on the snowball on the front of the door. This shows you what one you will be opening next. You will have to wait until the next day though! Only I am allowed to jump straight from door to door. I had to! Or there would be no review for you to read. I did it for you, my dear reader. The Puzzles Oh no! Something terrible has happened: Santa Claus’ golden book has disappeared! It contained a complete list of all the Christmas wishes. If the book isn’t found by Christmas Eve, there will be nothing but sad faces around the tree on Christmas morning. It is up to you to save Christmas — and time is of the essence!

Straight off the bat I will say that I absolutely adored the concept behind this product. Getting a tiny little chocolate each morning leading up to Christmas is all good with standard advent calendars if you are a kid (or big kid). But when you get older the chocolate just doesn’t give you the same buzz of excitement that it once did. Exit's Advent Calendar is an incredibly interesting activity for yourself, or to do with the family. Note All the individual components in the doors are fine. They only serve (mostly) as a onetime use, and sometimes this includes cutting and folding so the quality is really irrelevant. If you haven’t played an Exit game before it is essentially an escape room game in a small box. Normally there are 10 missions to achieve and it involves ripping up cards, drawing on the box, and various other activities that mean once you have finished it is unusable again, however the cost of each game is very low and almost all of the materials used are recyclable. The only issue I had with the puzzles were that at one point, one puzzle got a little ‘meta’. And the solution was in relation to the shapes depicted on the doors and the decoder. I needed to look at the solution for this one, as up until that point, the solutions were in relation to the story and to the rooms themselves. It was a little frustrating that this one puzzle was actually referencing something outside of the game itself. The Writing

This advent calendar is an EXIT game and an adventure story all in one. To find the golden book, you must open a little calendar door every day. Behind each, you will find a new exciting puzzle, the solution of which will help you to move onto the next room. Only if you follow the clues and solve all 24 puzzles will you find the thief and the book ... and save Christmas. And nobody can resist an advent calendar. Whether you grew up eating cheap choccies before school, or building a manger piece by piece, 1 December marks a routine change that is always a treat! I was relatively new to the Exit games last year and took a gamble on the advent calendar as it combined two of my favourite things; Games and Christmas. I was not disappointed. It was an absolute joy to start a new puzzle everyday and, combined with the well written story, it became one of the highlights of my gaming year. I still consider it to be one of the best Exit games I have played and I rate it as a 9 out of 10.