Deckscape: The Fate of London

This is a ‘pocket’ escape room game from dV Giochi. This escape room game has a deck of cards, hence Deckscape. There are no separate instructions, you just start reading the first card and follow the directions from there. Each card has a number, and you start with card number 1. The cards will explain the story to you as well. London needs your help!

As the puzzles are presented to you, when you believe you have the answer, you flip over that card which will tell you the correct answer. If you got the solution wrong, you mark an X on your score sheet. At the end of your game you will have a score based on the time it took you to solve and the number of X’s.

There are two ‘clue’ cards, which have very simple clues for some other cards. If you still are not sure how to solve the puzzle, then you can take a guess and flip the card over.

You will also find some ‘objects’ as you go through the cards. You hold onto objects and they can be used to solve puzzles.

I was excited to play this game. There was something appealing about the deck of cards to solve puzzles, without any extra pieces, like decoder. It just sounded like the focus would be on puzzle solving, which I enjoy.

I liked the design and the artwork. I enjoyed the variety of puzzles. There were some really inventive ways to solve some of the puzzles, which I also really liked. What I did not like was that there are some puzzles you will come to that require something else like an object or information, and there is nothing on that card to indicate that you need an object or other information to solve it. For the most part, nothing tells you that you need an object to solve a certain puzzle or which object goes with which puzzle. Although some hints do say you need a certain object to solve the puzzle. Most of them I figured out, but there were ones that I didn’t get. One of them I still don’t get after reading the solution.

What I found most frustrating, was that when I came to a puzzle I could not solve, I couldn’t tell whether I just wasn’t getting it or whether I was missing an object or information. So I couldn’t tell the difference between ‘try harder’ or try something different’ versus, try another puzzle, because you can’t solve this one yet.

Although this game has some puzzles you can solve in parallel, I don’t know how well to would work of more than two people. I think 3 or more people would have trouble seeing the cards at the same time, or there would be some passing cards around, which could slow down the game.

Overall, this game wasn’t a good match for me. It’s also at the same price point as other escape room games but I don’t know that their components have the same value.