ThinkFun Secret of Dr. Gravely’s Retreat - Escape Room Game for Adults and Kids Age 13 Years and Up

I bought 'Dr Gravely's Retreat' having enjoyed Think Fun's first outing in the play at home escape room genre, Mystery at the Stargazer's Manor. On first opening of the box you are presented with a rather underwhelming but decorative stack of sealed envelopes, an initial story card, and a code wheel for checking your deductions later. As the game unfolds and the envelopes are opened you find that they in fact contain a wide variety of clever puzzles, gizmos, story cards, and sometimes...more sealed envelopes. The aim of course is to solve all the clues and 'escape' the retreat within the time limit. Make sure you have a decent amount of table/floor space available to spread everything out on.The time limit varies depending on how many people are playing with 2-3 players getting 2.5hrs and 6 players getting around 1.5hrs. Both games in the series are designed to be played from around age 12 upwards but the puzzles are suitably taxing for older players too, just set the time limit a little tighter. For reference, we played it as a team of 3 thirty somethings whilst drinking and escaped in around 45 mins.What's more, there are full reset instructions available on Think Fun's website, so once you've completed the game you can pass it on to a friend!To cut a long story short...if you're after something different to play with the kids or a few friends then this is ACE!

We bought this game for our New Year's party with family - it was an absolute treat. The puzzles were intriguing and it was a lot of fun to play. It was really something that we all worked together on.There were some easy puzzles and then some quite tricky puzzles, tricky enough to make sure even the most astute sleuths are challenged. We managed to escape the room in just under an hour. We chose to play the extended game because we were having a lot of fun and managed to complete the extension in about 15 minutes.It's a shame that you can only play it once but I guess paying £1.75 per person to entertain 8 people for a couple of hours its pretty good value. We'll definitely try the other games in the series.

A good little escape game. Me and my husband are both escape room fanatics and have played most of the escape games out there. This one was very nice the usual codex format and the envelope system work well.It is recommended 3 - 5 or 6 - 8 players you get 2 hours for 3 - 5 and 1.5 hours for 6 - 8. However i would say this one is perfectly doable with 2 players. My husband and I completed it in 1 hour 35 mins and this included the optional extra puzzle within.DO NOT BREAK THE GAME!!! there are certain puzzles within that include rope. I wont spoil it but all i will say is that at no point should any ripping if paper occur to access the contents. You can get them open by unlocking the ropes.Good little game. I recommend it :)

Three hours of entertainment for the family - 2 adults and 2 18 year old teenagers. A couple of the puzzles are very simple and I think it would be better if the makers or even the suppliers put a sheet in with the game indicating which puzzles are the easiest and so suited to young teens of around 13/14.Realistically, you can only use this once, but compare with the price of going to the cinema or going bowling to a match and it looks like a cheap night's entertainment.We ignored the time limit and took our leisurely time with it.

Bought this as a gift so haven't played it yet. Disappointed as thought I was buying a 13+ version of stargazers manor as I read the product info on the image showing what I thought was the back of the box but it relates to the 10+ game. However I now realise the images against this are mixing up 2 different escape room games, it shows front of box for retreat game and back of box for stargazers manor game. Ended up with a 13+ game about a retreat which I thought was the stargazers manor one but now realise the stargazers manor one is only available as 10+.

This was great fun - it took a group of 7 of us aged 11 to 45 2 hours to complete. There was enough for everyone to do so no one was bored or left-out. I would definitely recommend this. We had booked to go to an escape room but had to cancel due to C-19- it was a good substitute!!

Very enjoyable

Great fun for a group of 8 different ages at new year. Better than expected. Kept us amused for nearly hour and a half. Better value than going to an escape room and just as good though one could cheat more easily

At home escape room boxes are always a little weird, they can only partially replicate the experience of a good in person escape room where you're walking around investigating things, but for a small group this little adventure was a nice close second to enjoy sitting around a table. We had a good variety of puzzles and with their special patented decoder ring technology the special joy of yelling out, "Red ladybug with only one dot! Yellow bullseye! Green yin-yang! Blue... Venn diagram but the circles don't overlap! I said NOT overlapping!" It's definitely a less tactile experience than this company's doll-house escape room, but still managed to have a few very hands on puzzles.What I really liked about this adventure was the cohesive storyline. If you like a story rich murder mystery investigation you'll probably enjoy unlocking the various "Scene cards" to learn more about what is happening at Foxcrest Retreat. Everything was styled for the time period, we met several characters and uncovered a simple but very sensical plot that tied them all together and the details were consistent throughout all the puzzles. I especially like that nothing needs to be used up or destroyed while solving and when you're done it even has a guide to re-pack everything to pass along to someone else to play, it's not a wasteful one-time use product.I will say like a lot of small escape room boxes some of the puzzles rely on spotting *tiny* details so having excellent lighting and reading glasses or magnifying lenses on hand might be a good idea. We also had one poor member of our investigation team that was red/green color blind and unfortunately that made it very difficult for him to contribute and play along for a lot of parts of the adventure. But thankfully because the story was so rich he at least got to enjoy the narration and seeing the story unfold.

Poca rejugabilidad, predecible.Por el precio está bien.

Great fun. We had 5-6 adults sitting around a table (two were English second language) and with some chatting, eating etc as we played it took us almost 2 hours. Required some thought, used the online hints a bit. A nice evening. Online instructions were very good for putting it back together so it can be reused by someone. Nice alternative to a murder mystery as you don’t need specific numbers.

We had a lot of fun completing this. 4 adults, took us 90 minutes, plus an additional 30 mins to do the ‘extra part’ at the end.It was fun to do after dinner, all of us helped with the clues, we did have to use the online hint at one stage as we were stumped on one of the clues but overall would happily purchase another game.

c'est super comme jeu. les commentaires que j'ai lu disaient que c'était assez facile. Pour nous c'etait pas si simple. On a réussi à le faire mais pas en 90 mins. Il faut quand meme réflechir en groupe chacun donne ses idées. Je le recommande !