1457: Escape, Again

Enjoyed our bi-weekly board gaming session with some of my local friends tonight, and it was the first opportunity to get a number of games to our communal table — though sadly we didn’t quite have time to get to play all of them.

I was particularly curious to see how Escape: The Curse of the Temple played with more than two people, though, and as predicted, it’s incredibly chaotic — at least initially. After a while, you start to realise you don’t necessarily have to be as quick as possible, you simply have to be methodical and careful.

For those unfamiliar with Escape and/or those who didn’t read my original post on the subject, it’s a real-time cooperative board game in which the group of players has ten minutes of real time to escape from a collapsing temple. In order to do so, they need to activate a certain number of “magic gems” along the way — and, of course, find the exit, which is somewhere among the randomly generated complex of rooms.

Gameplay in Escape is initially bewildering if you’re not ready for it. Being a real-time game, you don’t take “turns” as such; everyone is doing their thing at the same time — primarily rolling dice. In order to reveal new rooms, for example, you need to roll two “adventurer” symbols; in order to move into a room, you need to roll a specific combination of two symbols. Rolling black masks temporarily puts dice out of commission, and rolling golden masks “heals” up to two black masks, and other players in the same room as you are able to use their golden masks to heal you.

Given the seemingly short span of time in which you have to escape the temple, it’s easy to run around in a blind panic and lose track of what everyone else is doing. But success in Escape is more contingent on cooperation than the initially chaotic-seeming premise may lead you to believe. It rewards teamwork and communication, with the most efficient route to success appearing to be to split into teams and work together to discover the rooms that allow you to acquire the greatest number of magic gems as efficiently as possible.

Despite its heavily random nature — it’s all about rolling dice as quickly as possible — there’s a surprising amount of depth to this fast-paced game. The ability to “hold” dice you haven’t used to perform an action allows you to reduce your chances of rolling symbols you might need to achieve something in the name of being prepared for something else. And if you play with the optional “Curses and Treasures” modules included in the base set, there’s even greater depth — curses provide distractions from your main task, while treasures offer you alternative means of achieving your goals.

It’s a really interesting game and all the more notable for unfolding in just ten minutes. We got two games of it in tonight, and I’m really keen to play it again soon.