Scooby-Doo!: Escape from the Haunted Mansion is Spooktacular
Our game of the month is none other than the very deserving Scooby-Doo!: Escape from the Haunted Mansion published by The OP Games. Our family, and particularly our 7-year-old-son, has been entranced by escape rooms recently. And the high quality of Escape from the Haunted Mansion, coupled with his familiarity of the Mystery Gang, truly captured his imagination.
One adorable side effect of playing Escape from the Haunted Mansion is that our son immediately went deep down the rabbit hole of Scooby-Doo cartoons. From the classic original, to A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, to the numerous recent incarnations, and even the new movie Scoob! that released this year - there’s no doubt that it’s his favorite cartoon right now. And Escape from the Haunted Mansion gets all the credit for that.
One thing in particular that this game does incredibly well is the role playing. Each character has their very own abilities and their very own book of dialogue. And while this is a cooperative game, and you should be deciding all of your actions together - you can also certainly pretend that you are one of the characters and read aloud from their dialogue book throughout the game.
Our son was absolutely crazy about reading from the books to us - and he always wanted to hold onto Scooby’s and Shaggy’s books in particular. And Scooby’s ability is smelling things, so our son was sniffing around for clues the whole time. It was truly a delight having him so involved and reading his parts to everyone, and I think that design is a gigantic reason that the game is so immersive and endearing.
The design is really brilliant, and the way the books work is very clever. There are numbered clues scattered all over the haunted mansion, and each character is numbered 1-5. Scooby is number 4, so if you find a bookshelf marked “327” and you want Scooby to sniff it, you just look up “4327” in his book and read what it says. You never know exactly where you’re going to find the next clue, so it truly is up to everyone to thoroughly investigate this mansion and work together.
And even though the official age recommendation is 12+, I think the difficulty level of the puzzles is actually the best we’ve ever found for escape rooms in a box. They were consistently challenging without ever seeming out of reach or impossible. And, most importantly, our son was able to participate and feel more involved and part of the team than ever before. Together we solved the mysteries of the mansion at a very smooth and enjoyable pace.
We played through the game with three people - my wife, myself, and our 7-year-old son - and it took us a solid 3 or 4 hours of a weekend afternoon. The story is great and very engaging, and our son didn’t want to take a break at all. But there’s also a very convenient system for stopping halfway through the game and the story if you want to split the game into more than one session.
And, speaking of the smooth system for packing things up halfway through the game, I have to point out that I’m a huge fan of the helpful organization of this game in general. By far it’s the most organized and helpful escape room in a box we’ve ever played. As you play, the game constantly reminds you which cards and objects you no longer need and can place in the discard pile, and which new rooms and cards you need to reveal.
And, even better than that, the game also tells you exactly which secret envelopes to place things back into when you’re done with them. So by the time you’re done playing the game, you’ve basically cleaned up already and you’re ready to play again next time. I figure it might be a year or so before we forget everything about the puzzles and can play again with clear minds, and I definitely look forward to when our daughter is old enough to join in with us.
The OP calls their line of escape rooms Coded Chronicles - and I hope there are many more to come. Right now the only other Coded Chronicles game is an age 17+ game based on The Shining. That sounds pretty amazing honestly, but since we’re quite a few years away from playing that one as a family, I really hope they have more family-friendly ideas in store for us. Since they’ve licensed many Harry Potter games already, my fingers are crossed that we get a Harry Potter escape room next. That would absolutely blow our minds.
I can’t stress enough how amazing a family experience this game was. It was the absolute perfect way to spend a weekend afternoon together, and our son was very invested and very enamored with the whole thing. Here’s to hoping that there is much more to come.
