The first puzzle worked well for onboarding players. It wasn’t too challenging. Through it we understood how Escape from the Grand Hotel wanted us to play it. Professor Puzzle encourages players to make an evening of Escape from the Grand Hotel. They included invitations to mail to guests, who can come in character and in costume. This would be a fun way to make a play-at-home puzzle game into a bigger event. Professor Puzzle stumbled with hinting and editing. Bluntly, this game felt under playtested. There were too many little problems that were easily fixable. The hint system was innovative, but insufficient. We encountered some taxonomy inconsistencies within the in-game instructions. The way that it referred to things sometimes shifted. This got confusing.

Is it an escape room...? Well, no... but this should by no means put escape room fans off going because it has so many elements of the theatre and story element that we love in escape rooms.The end of the game just stops without a big final puzzle/reveal. There was no ‘ah-ha’ moment. A bit of a disappointment really. Weird, wonderful, exhausting, entertaining, daft and downright ridiculous, Phantom Peak is an immersive experience not to be missed. There are some interesting ideas and a lot of great execution in Escape from the Grand Hotel. If you really enjoy tabletop escape games, this one had a lot to offer. However, there were too many little flaws and gaps that got amplified by the limited hint system for me to comfortably recommend this to a tabletop escape game newbie. Who is this for?

To make a larger event around this game, mail out the enclosed invitations and have your guests arrive in character and in costume. Note, the character roles are entirely for fun and are not relevant to the gameplay.The gameplay took some clear inspiration from the ThinkFun tabletop escape games, using location envelopes and paper components to tell a puzzle-driven narrative. Their approach to answer verification was clever. It wasn’t clear that those character invitations were even an option until we had started the game.

Each room envelope unfolds to reveal a clue. Some rooms contain a puzzle to solve, but surprisingly, not each room holds a puzzle. Some just hold a puzzle piece or a continuation of the story. Yes, there’s a lot of reading. Continuing our “travels” while isolated at home in London, we took a trip to a Grand Hotel. This is the first Professor Puzzle Escape Room in a box game we have tried. This is a 90 minutes escape game. The trails themselves require very little puzzle-solving and a bit more of a challenge would be very welcome but the object here is to immerse yourself in this steam punk world and go on a few adventures along the way. It's a totally unique experience. Although the artwork was beautiful, it included a visual variance that factored into the gameplay. Cluing needed to match the artwork, or vice versa. The story was hokey, but it came together well enough in the end. It worked for the game and made us smile in the end.

We enjoyed the structure of Escape from the Grand Hotel. Each puzzle led us to another room in the hotel. It was fun to explore the hotel in this way. The box states it is for 2 to 8 players, but there were only two of us playing. So it was a surprise when we opened the box to find character invitations for 8 players. Maybe it is meant as a dinner party game where we all play different roles, we mused. But, no. The characters seem to play no part in the game whatsoever! The Grand Hotel was once the place for the rich and famous to visit. After decades of disrepair, the mysterious and wealthy Blossom family had restored the hotel to its former glory. Kurt Blossom and his beautiful wife, Lauren had invited us to the hotel’s grand reopening. We were ready for a night to remember – little did we suspect it would be for all the wrong reasons! Another very different at home proposition, Escape from the Grand Hotel, is a table top, envelope-based escape experience. Professor Puzzle provided duplicate copies of one of the more tedious puzzles so that more players could participate.

Going over Halloween meant that we were there for the Lunar Festival and the town was suitably themed for spooky season. The decor really is superb and the actors go out of their way to make the whole experience feel genuine. Escape from the Grand Hotel”arrived in a beautifully designed box with quality printed material. Bigger than most escape-room-in-a-box we have played (except Mystery At the Stargazers Manor) we were expecting great things. As for the puzzles they were a mixture of “too easy” and “too illogical.” We rattled through most of the game without any trouble until we hit the coded fax puzzle. The game provided duplicate copies of this puzzle, so we could both pore over it. We found it to be one of the most tedious puzzles we’ve ever done. It made absolutely no sense, even after reading the hint and seemed to solved purely by searching. (When we finished the game we read the supposed answer and it still made no sense!)

This is a really interesting concept. You are presented with a series of different envelopes, each designed as the exterior to one of the rooms of the Grand Hotel. You must work your way around the hotel, carrying out each of the puzzles contained within the envelope. When finding the answer to the puzzle, this will then give you a hint to the next room you need to move to. To win the game, you must answer all the puzzles within the envelopes, escape the hotel and work out what is happening behind its closed doors.