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Product: History Mysteries: The Egyptian Enigma
Price: £24.00
Age Range: 8+
Manufacturer’s Description: Agent Cleo works for the mysterious organisation known as the Ministry of Time… and she’s trapped in Egypt in 1922! This looks like foul play… She’s sent a package through time, desperately hoping it falls into the right hands. Can you save her?
Rating: (5/5 stars) Review: If you’re anything like me, you start looking for Christmas present ideas as soon as the children go back to school in September, and we enjoyed this review so much that I’m considering treating Lydia to another one from the series for Christmas. History Mysteries: The Egyptian Enigma is an “escape room in a box” style family adventure, with multiple puzzles to solve in order to rescue Cleo, a time agent trapped in 1922 Egypt. The only things you need outside of what is in the box are a pen and paper for notes, and a device with an internet connection to contact Cleo and input the final answer to rescue her. When you open the (rather gorgeous gold-foiled) box, you find two envelopes inside; one of which instructs you to open it first, and the second, larger one marked “In Case of Emergency”. Lydia, who loves puzzles and mysteries as much as I do, and I sat down together to tackle The Egyptian Enigma. Our first step was, of course, to open the first envelope to find a letter from Cleo, who has been trapped in time, along with her ID. She instructs you to go to a specific web address and gives you clues to figure out her login details. Working this out and logging into the Ministry of Time Operating System on your web browser gives you a voice message from Cleo and eventually (no major spoilers here!) you end up on a page with a large countdown timer. You get 60 minutes to tackle the contents of the emergency envelope, along with instructions on what to do first. The large envelope is full of mysterious-looking envelopes with different animals stamped on them, one marked with the Ministry of Time logo and “Emergency Instructions”, and a partial piece of a message written only in hieroglyphics. Opening the Emergency Instructions envelope gives you the key to navigate through the other envelopes in order, solving different types of puzzles as you go. Eventually, everything comes together to decode various messages and give you the code to save Cleo. Lydia and I managed to solve the case with around half an hour of time remaining, but (putting humbleness aside!) we are both pretty good at solving puzzles. With this being aimed at families with children aged 8+, that is about what I would expect for this difficulty level. James did sit with us and make the odd contribution, but as he’d just finished a long day of work, he mostly just watched us tackle the mysteries hidden in each envelope. Some of the puzzles were more challenging than others, but they were all enjoyable, and we had a lot of fun working it all out. Having one envelope to solve at a time made it a bit easier than a game where you get all the information at once, as it guides you through the puzzles in a fairly linear way. I loved the immersive historical style and design of this product, and the way everything came together at the end for the final few puzzles – you may have to go back through your envelopes to figure out the right information! There’s also original music that plays while you’re solving the puzzles, which adds another layer to the atmosphere and makes the whole thing feel more like an escape room experience rather than simply working your way through a box of puzzles. There are a few red herrings thrown in to trip you up, but thankfully Lydia and I managed to avoid these! We did investigate them when we were done though, and let’s just say you can end up with a small punishment if you do find one. We also let the timer run down to zero once without solving it to find out what happens. I’ll just say that if you are struggling with the time limit or solving it with younger members of your family, don’t stress too much as it ticks down to zero. Overall, we really enjoyed ourselves and even got ourselves a nice certificate and a ‘debrief’ document to read when we were finished. The game is designed to be played through once, but if you do want to pass it on to someone else to solve, you can use an erasable pen or pencil like we did to remove the small amount of writing on the documents provided that you do need to do, or photocopy them and write on the copies. At £24, it is on the pricier side for one of these escape room games, but the quality of the contents, the online aspect, voice acting and original music all help to make it feel like a complete experience rather than just a box of puzzles. Overall, we had a brilliant time solving The Egyptian Enigma together. The puzzles were varied and enjoyable, the story was fun to follow, and all the little details – from the design of the contents to the voice acting and original music – made it feel really immersive. It’s a great option for families who enjoy puzzles and mysteries, and I can definitely see myself buying another game from the History Mysteries series. It’s a definite ★★★★★ from us.
