When it was announced, I was fairly excited about the concept of Unboxed. It is, in essence, a board game themed escape room-like experience. As I’ve become more and more of a solo gamer in recent years, the fact that the game specifically listed 1-4 players excited me even more. So, what did I think once I opened the box? Let’s take a (mostly) spoiler-free look at Unboxed.
Unboxed finds you as a part of an archaeological dig on a team led by the intrepid Dr. Ramos. You are brought in to try and decipher the rules of 10 games discovered in various dig sites. Along the way, the good Doctor will help guide you along by asking key questions. There is a scoring system included in the box, but I found it completely unnecessary, as the real goal of the box is to uncover 10 games.
Now, my first criticism… the first thing you are going to need is the dig manual. When you open the manual to the first page, you are greeted with…the answers to all of the clues in the game! I think this was a pretty poor choice. Every puzzle book I’ve ever bought puts the answers at the back of the book. Without wanting to, I inadvertanly caught the answer to a question. Granted, I didn’t know when it would come up, but I knew that when I saw that number what the answer already was.
Each “dig site” is laid out very clearly. A brief sentence or two describes what the archaeologists have found and surmised so far. The components you will need from the box are listed in the upper right corner. Finally, the series of questions you must answer are listed below. I’m going to share the very first dig site page below.
It’s the basic stuff you need to know to play a game. Later dig sites, as you might expect, get into more complex concepts. You are allowed to manipulate the items however you’d like to try and come up with the right answers. You will never need to bring in any outside items (paper, pencils, etc.) to solve the game. Once you’ve come up with answers, you turn the page and read the actual rules of the game. You’ve now learned a new mini-game that you can play whenever you want!
As I mentioned earlier, there is a scoring system to Unboxed. However, I found it completely unnecessary. You score 3 points per question you got correct, and 2 points if you only sort of got it right. After finishing all 10 dig sites, total up your score and check it next to the guide in the back of the manual. Then make sure you read the back cover…
As for my experience as a solo player… it’s rather mixed. I enjoyed going through the dig sites and trying to solve the puzzles to the best of my ability. The iconography on the cards, for the most part, conveyed the proper ways things were supposed to go. The only times I ran into any issues at all were in later dig sites when the questions assumed facts not in evidence. Occasionally you’d have a question that had no visual representation on any of the cards. In those cases, you kind of just had to guess based on other games you might have played with similar mechanics. I wouldn’t say those were frequent, but they did put a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.
At this point, I’m going to say that I, as a gamer with 30 years of experience in the hobby, am not the target audience for a product like this. Before I opened the box, I committed to only do one dig site a day over a 10-day period so I could take my time and enjoy the process. Unfortunately, even the most complicated game only took me about 10 minutes to work out. So for experienced gamers, I don’t know if this will be a satisfying experience.
For families, or for new people into the hobby however, I could see them getting a fair amount of fun out of this box. Most of the games appear to be decent fun. There’s a decent breadth of mechanics on display. A couple drafting games, some bluffing, and even some light worker placement. I think an aspiring game designer could use some of these games as a jumping off point for bigger things (this is even suggested in the manual for the game).
Where it fell flattest was for me, again as a solo gamer, was that none of the finished dig site games were playable solo. So in essence, I bought half an experience. I got to solve the puzzles, but then didn’t get the reward of enjoying my finished works. Again, as an experienced gamer (TM) this isn’t a big deal because I have played most of these games in slightly different forms before. I just would have liked to have had more to do than box it all back up and hand it off to someone else.
There was one other thing that I felt was a missed opportunity (and possibly fodder for a future installation?). I was under the impression that some, if not all, of these mini-games could be combined into one larger experience. Sadly, that was not the case.
Overall, I’m not displeased with my experience with Unboxed. I realized eventually that I’m not the target audience, and that’s ok. There are plenty of people that I think could get a lot out of this experience, and I hope they find Unboxed.
It Came From The Basement!! 