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. 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.

Is this an advent calendar you will only need for Christmas? No. Why not use it in a random March and surprise yourself for the first 3/4 of the month and test yourself to solve the riddles! Well, it is particularly AIMED for opening on the leadup to Christmas… but it’s okay, we’re not going to tell anyone if you don’t! 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

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 EXIT: The Game is a popular series of escape room games that deliver a huge variety of puzzles, bringing the escape room experience to your home in a small box. 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!

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.We have been really impressed by the variety of puzzles and difficulty levels across the Hunt for the Golden Book and there’s no comparison with the cheap choccy offerings of old. Thanks to Exit this has been the best first Board Gamesmas ever and we can’t wait for 1 December when we get to start the other Exit Advent Calendar – The Mystery of the Ice Cave!