Escape: The Curse of the Temple (Kristian Amundsen Østby, 2012)

Escape is a board game - one that Clare and I gave her brother during our trip to Michigan last week.  Clare and I have been getting more into board games lately.  Since our video gaming habits are usually pretty anti-social, it's nice to be able to invite a friend or two over to play something other than You Don't Know Jack.  So far, the games we've played run on the complex side, but Escape bills itself as a family game.  Believe me, it's far more fun than the dreaded Monopoly or Clue.

The goal of this game?  Escape from the temple, of course, within ten minutes.  There's no competition here - either all of the players make it out or everybody loses.  The players discover new rooms, move around, and activate gems (necessary to get out) by means of dice rolling.  But if you roll a "black mask", then the die becomes cursed, and can't be used again until you roll a "golden mask".  Roll all black masks and you become frozen, until another player in the same room lets you use one of their golden masks.  This means that cooperation is key.

So far, this would be pretty dull stuff, but for the game's main gimmick:  there are no turns!  Everyone is rolling their dice as fast as they can.  This is one of those ideas that seems so obvious in retrospect.  Just in the last few years, there are quite a few awesome-sounding games that make use of it.  It makes the game pretty suspenseful, and to enhance the ambience the game even comes with a timer in the form of a spooooky CD soundtrack.

So how does it work in practice?  Pretty well, actually.  The rules are pretty simple, which is important, because everything has to be learned before you start the timer.  But the game is no cakewalk!  It's extremely easy to get locked without much warning, so it's a good idea to partner up and stay in constant communication.  During our playthrough, we were chattering things like "Almost locked", "Got 3 Keys", and "New Room" in a state of near-panic.  Nobody made it out in our first game, but by the second we'd figured out some basic strategies - stay in a group as much as possible, keep near the central chamber to avoid the "gongs" - and we all made it out with minutes to spare.  Fortunately, there are plenty of mini-expansions included to add difficulty and keep the game fresh.

But like any great family game, difficulty is not the point.  It's just great fun, with lots of excitement and no need to wait around for your turn.