ThinkFun Escape the Room The Cursed Dollhouse – An Escape Room Experience in a Box for Ages 13 and Up (7353)

Quarantine got ya down? Feeling trapped? This escape room at home is the excellent solution to all of your boredom woes. It’s a scary story, haunted house of puzzle horrors and escape room all in one!! The instructions come with a very detailed manual that narrates a story as you move from room to room. The story is creative, fun and engaging and the instructions are clear and easy to follow. The puzzles were moderate to complete, challenging enough to keep you engaged but easy enough to finish with little to no use of hints. Assembly is extremely easy!! And reassembling is super easy as well so you can regift it to a friend.Excellent quality product. The box/house is sturdy enough that it is not falling apart after one use of assembly and disassembly. All of the clues are used so there is no wasted cardboard anywhere in this game. Highly recommend!(Caution- it is intended to be a “cursed” dollhouse so it may be a little creepy for younger audiences. We did the game as a family and just censored it as we felt it was needed for our 7 year old. It is clean and not satanic but there are some images in the puzzles that may be too much for little ones).

The Cursed Dollhouse is absolutely the worst game I've ever played in my life. Not just the worst escape room game, but THE worst game ever! It was horrible. This game has a difficulty level of 5 (out of 5), so of course we expected it to be challenging; but this game is complete garbage.Here's a little tidbit of information (not a spoiler) that I'm guessing 99% of people who buy this game don't realize (because you have to read the back of the box to discover it), but there is a Difficulty Level 3 version of The Cursed Dollhouse available. The story book that comes in the box is the Level 5 game; but you can go online and download a .PDF file of an alternate story book. All the puzzles in the game are the same and have the same solutions & methodology, but the alternate story book gives more clues in the narrative... or so they claim. So my wife and I downloaded the Level 3 version, and the way we played the game was to begin each new room with the Level 5 narrative, and then when we realized we were completely stumped we'd read the Level 3 version of the room for more insight. You know what? It made ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE!Normally I like to repack escape games when possible and pass them on (family, friend, thrift store), but this is one game where I told my wife, "I'm not putting -anyone- else through the horrible experience we just went through," and the game went straight into the garbage can. You know, trying to find a silver lining here, I at least give ThinkFun credit for trying to create an immersive experience, but as my wife said, "I think they put too much effort into the dollhouse and none into the game." I also give them credit for providing an alternate Level 3 version of the game. If only it had worked (i.e. the Level 3 narrative didn't tell us anything that we hadn't already figured out). If ever a game deserved zero stars, it's The Cursed Dollhouse. FYI: We played this game over three agonizing evenings.After playing Stargazer's Manor and Dr. Gravely's Retreat, my wife and I quickly became HUGE fans of the Escape The Room series; but just as quickly, The Cursed Dollhouse tore it all down. I hope ThinkFun learned from their failure and made significant improvements to Murder In The Mafia, the next in the Escape The Room series. We'll see.

3.5 Stars. I got this for my husband as a birthday gift. He loves escape rooms and generally thinks the harder ones are better. With just 2 people, this took several hours (about 2.5) All in all, we got burned out after about an hour and a half. We wished we had broken it into 2 chunks and split it up across multiple days. A few of the puzzles really didn't make sense. We enjoy logic puzzles and are good at them, but we got stuck. Even after looking at the solutions, we thought the puzzles were too much of a stretch and were poorly designed.Overall a fun investment, but I would break it into segments to solve and suggest that they redo some of the less-logical puzzles.

It's hard. Really is. We've had it 1.5 years and still haven't finished it. Kind of lost interest.

The ThinkFun escape room games are very high quality and very well-designed. This particular one is very hard, and may not be for everyone. The official online clue system is helpful though. Also, the puzzles are physically small, so if you have more than two or three people, it could be tricky for everyone to participate.

Wow that was a fun game! Lots of surprise puzzles in each room. So fun! I did not time myself and played by myself during a weekend away in a (slightly spooky) cabin in the woods. I did have to use a hint, just to discover I had figured out the puzzle, mostly. It was exciting to move to a new room in the dollhouse, and I did not want to put it back in its box for the trip home. My only complaint is that the tape used on the outside slipcover ripped the box (the dollhouse exterior) and I wish they could have maybe shrink wrapped it rather then using 4 tiny circles of tape. Which was a bit accessive. I was very careful and yet this was the first thing I did...rip the dollhouse box...which upset me before I had even assembled it. If you can not shrink wrap, maybe label the stickers to cut them, do not try to peel them off. I hope to bring this with me to some gaming conventions next year...even though I solved it I think it would be fun to play again.