Adventure Games: The Dungeon

A point-and-click adventure, rebuilt out of cardboard and a booklet you are not allowed to read ahead in.

You wake in a cell with no memory of arriving. The board is a set of locations; you combine things, examine things, and look up numbered entries in a book that tells you what happened. If you have ever played an old adventure game on a computer, the shape will be immediately familiar — including the bit where you try the obvious thing and the book tells you, with some relish, that it did not work.

Three chapters of roughly ninety minutes each, played in order, and it is genuinely one-and-done: once you know the answers the game is finished. That is the deal with this format, and at this price it is a fair one. Entry point to the Adventure Games series and the least demanding of the three.

Perfect for: two or three people who like escape rooms but resent paying forty dollars a head for one.

1–4 players | 3 chapters, about 90 minutes each | Age 12+ | Single use