Unlock! is back with a new trio of pseudo-puzzle rooms for you and your friends to solve. Why does this review only handle the first two of them? Two reasons.
1. The first two were readily available for play and review, whereas the third was not.
2. If the first two are any indication of the third's quality, I want no part of it.
Spoilers, btw.
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If you're familiar with the Unlock! games, the basic gameplay needs no introduction. (If you're not, there are numerous explanations online; all you need to know for now is that some of them are quite good, and this review is not indicative of the series as a whole.) The storylines of these two are pretty much what the box art suggests.
- Night of the Boogeymen puts you in a position to help a young boy defeat the boogeymen around his room and finally get some sleep.
- Scheherazade's Last Tale shows the famed Scheherazade in need of one more tale, just when she's run out. She needs you to find her artist friend and bring back the one story she needs to be free.
They start out fine. You have basic puzzles, hidden numbers, all the normal design elements of an Unlock! game. As has become common with these games, Boogeymen has another piece: a flat sheet of paper with some colored dots that look like gems, and teeth. (Scheherazade sticks with the old formula of cards with numbers and letters, and nothing else.) Most puzzles are pretty doable, some are tricky, a few are aggravating, but that's not the problem; one person's incomprehensible mess is another person's easily-sorted problem, which is why you play with friends.
However, both of these suffer from a flaw so massive it signals either a change in designer, a severe drop-off in playtesting, or both: the ability to reach a point where you need a certain item or set of clues to proceed, and you simply... don't.
Again: spoilers. As minimal as possible, but on some level spoilers.
In Boogeymen, the end-game scenario takes you away from the normal app and on to a new screen. It's kind of cool; that part isn't the problem. The problem is that in order to make sense of the final puzzle, you need another set of clues, and you can skip those clues by deciding to use the pieces that lead you to the final puzzle first. Once you're on that last screen, you can't go back to the app, so you can't even look for hints on other cards you might have left. By all appearances, you have to go after the final puzzle with what you have, and you can very easily not have what you need.
Scheherazade, to my disappointment (because I like the tale), is worse. There's a puzzle where you can go in a few different directions (ie. take a few different cards). The way the puzzle is set up, you have one correct answer; if you've ever played an Unlock! game before, you know that wrong answers are penalties. If you solve the puzzle, you have no reason to pursue the other answers.
However, you come across an obstacle for which you need a certain item. If you know anything about these stories, there's an excellent chance you'll figure out what type of item you need. However, you have to get that item from one of the "wrong" answers to that previous puzzle. It could be clever, if done well; setting forth a section where there appears to be only one thing you need, then hiding something else inside it, is nicely tricky and not a bad idea at all.
Scheherazade, though, asks the players to do a couple of things that don't make sense. First, it makes them go "backwards" in the game timeline. You do the puzzle well before you come across the obstacle that requires this hidden item. The way the story progresses, it does not at all appear like you should be able to run away from the obstacle, get the item, then come back. Furthermore, people are risk-averse; giving them a situation that looks for all the world like a penalty, then making them figure out it isn't, is a hard pull. There's an excellent chance that if people figure it out, it's only through hints, having literally no other options, or both.
On the other hand (speaking broadly, not about this puzzle specifically), if you put an obstacle down that the players can't pass, then give them the puzzle with the item they need hidden within, there's a much better chance they'll make the connection. Maybe they felt that made the game too easy; it's a 2 out of 3 in difficulty rating. But making people jump around incoherently through the storyline you've built doesn't make for good puzzles. It's just confusing.
Boogeymen isn't bad, especially when you play with the paper. Scheherazade is a mess. Get someone else to buy both of them, if you can.
Score: 5.5/10 (Boogeymen), 4/10 (Scheherazade)
