Mystery House Companion App

I bought this on a whim because my husband and I love escape room games. After playing both games in this box, we decided it's a great game that could be so much better with a few minor changes. It feels like it didn't go through enough play testing before going to production. Some observations: **Spelling mistakes. The last screen proudly pronounces, "The mistery is unfolded!" And in Family Portrait, one of the objects listed is "COAR RACK." **The penalties are too harsh. For example, in Family Portrait there are several locked doors and keys. If you try the wrong key in a door, you lose 30 seconds of your time. But there's no indication about which key goes to which door. Or if you're stuck and don't know what to do, you're penalized for trying things that could make sense (the ear is alive? What if I poke it with this sharp sword?) but end up being wrong. Or if you just fat finger what you're trying to press and hit something else instead. Why have penalties at all? I get that they don't want people to just guess at answers without figuring things out, but the kind of people who do that aren't going to be playing these games. We've played other escape room games where you're not penalized for trying, and it's much less frustrating. It doesn't add insult to injury and encourages you to keep trying. **You can't skip clues you don't need, and you're penalized for all of them. If I ask for a clue, it might tell me something I already know. But I'm still penalized for it. Again, why have penalties at all? At the end, just note how many clues I used. Or, have an honor system feedback button at the bottom of the clue, which asks something like "Was this helpful?" If the user says "No," give them the next clue and don't count the first one against them. **MINOR SPOILER** In Lord of the Labyrinth, the first clue for the Minotaur should really have been in the game. All the game tells you are that the Minotaur is lost in reflection. How on earth are you supposed to know he's looking for something? I mean, you could try things, but oh yeah, you're penalized for that if you guess wrong. **END SPOILER** This game has great potential, and we thought the mechanics were fun and unique. I like that you can reuse the board for other games, and the app integration is clever. For the most part, the puzzles were fun and made sense. I do hope they come out with more games, but I also hope they fix these issues.

Not a stand-alone phone game just the app for the board game but that isn't stated here. Hopefully I can afford the actual game someday then I can do an actual review.

Labyrinth: Am I suppose to remove walls when I successfully interact? Cause if i don't i don't have access to R5 but if I do then we have issues with L5. Most of the issues ive encounter are entirely with the coding which should be easy to fix. I like the concept but it's a failure in terms of playability. I restarted five times trying to figure out what I'd missed and ended up having to remove H₁ for no reason.

Interactive and boring. Do not recommend. Stopped playing. Usually we love exit games...