Professor Puzzle | Escape from Grand Hotel | Puzzle | Ages 12+ | 2+ Players

Product Information

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! 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.

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. Another very different at home proposition, Escape from the Grand Hotel, is a table top, envelope-based escape experience. 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? Weird, wonderful, exhausting, entertaining, daft and downright ridiculous, Phantom Peak is an immersive experience not to be missed. Professor Puzzle provided duplicate copies of one of the more tedious puzzles so that more players could participate.

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. 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. 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. We encountered some taxonomy inconsistencies within the in-game instructions. The way that it referred to things sometimes shifted. This got confusing.

Although the artwork was beautiful, it included a visual variance that factored into the gameplay. Cluing needed to match the artwork, or vice versa.

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. 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 end of the game just stops without a big final puzzle/reveal. There was no ‘ah-ha’ moment. A bit of a disappointment really. It wasn’t clear that those character invitations were even an option until we had started the game.

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!

On the plus side, the game can be played again as you do not destroy any of the components. We took photos of each room so we could reset it, but there are reset instructions given in the Puzzle Solutions guide. Cannot really recommend this escape game as although it looks beautiful, the puzzles are not great. 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 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.