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Vincent van Gogh was a remarkable artist. 130 years after his death his work is still revered, and a museum in Amsterdam holds his collection for all to admire. Your riddle solving prowess has called you here with a surprising mission: find a secret masterpiece that’s gone missing before someone else does. In EXIT: The Hunt through Amsterdam - a single-play, escape room style board game by Inka & Markus Brand and published by Kosmos - “can you solve the riddles and find the missing masterpiece”?
The Team
I recently reviewed another EXIT game (EXIT: The Return to the Abandoned Cabin) which was the first EXIT game I’d ever played and I played it with the max player count, a group of four. If this is your first time playing a game of this style, I’d recommend giving that review a read. That being said, this review will discuss approachability, complexity and vibes in the same way the past review did...but the team was different. Instead of 4 players, we decided to give it a go as a two-hander, just me and my brilliant fiancé. The dream team. So I’ll also be discussing if/how it played differently.
The Setup
EXIT: The Hunt Through Amsterdam is super easy to setup. Set aside all the hint cards, grab yourself some scissors, some paper and a pen/pencil. The paper is only used for note-taking so a notebook will work too. Pop out the pop-outs but don’t look at them too closely, read the excerpt and go. The game recommends 12 and up, which I’d agree with. If a child is too young to be trusted with scissors, they’re likely too young to understand a huge amount of the clues.
I still hate the use of the word “sheets” to describe certain game components. Naming them “location sheets” and “flyer” does not remove anything from the game. Calling them just “sheets” can make it really confusing to know if you’re looking at the right thing.
I would highly recommend using the Kosmos Helper App for the timer and soundtrack. It was a beautiful addition that I didn’t know was a thing last time I played but it really helped set the atmosphere, and the spoken intro was a nice touch. I wish there was a way to change the music when tensions start to rise (like have a button on the app when you reach a certain clue type and set the atmosphere more accurately for the moment) but it’s not a detriment to the game at all.
The Game
Before I start talking about the game, this will obviously be spoiler-free, but please keep in mind that my experience of the game could be very different to yours. I’m a big puzzle lover, but puzzles that click for me and that I enjoy could be very different to the style of puzzles you enjoy, and this will purely be from the perspective of how my team navigated the game. It is not necessarily indicative of other people’s experiences. Now that that’s out of the way...
EXIT: The Hunt Through Amsterdam is really pretty. The illustrations are by Martin Hoffman and have this Van-Gogh-esque painted style which is an incredibly thoughtful attention to detail that ties in beautifully with the theme. I was almost expecting to see a few different illustrators listed on this game as it flips styles per clue, but Hoffman seems to be able to do it all!
The theme is lovely. The Hunt through Amsterdam takes you, well, through Amsterdam. Each completed riddle section leads you to another location, with new information and new scenery, and you’re taken through the landmarks of Amsterdam as you go. You’ll even learn some facts on the way. It’s different to what you’d expect in an EXIT game, but a welcome change.
The hints and puzzle cards were mostly easy to use. A huge part of my previous review included me saying “Trust the symbols, and trust that your hints won’t be wasted if you need them.”. Which I still agree with, except we tripped up a couple times here and there. There were 2 occasions in which it didn’t quite work. To avoid spoilers, or unintentionally altering your game experience, I will be as vague as possible here whilst still highlighting my issue. Firstly, there was a number clue that was part of a code, that initially we thought was a letter. We saw the number by itself, highlighted in a weird way, and we immediately searched for the card in the Riddle card stack. This provided us with a clue for a future riddle. It wasn’t until we followed the clue that included that weirdly highlighted number that we realised we shouldn’t have that clue. Realistically, there was no reason to believe we were wrong. The Return to the Abandoned Cabin had a clue incredibly similar to what we did here, so we were using knowledge from previous EXIT experience, but we weren’t allowed to do that in this game - arguably a bit silly. Worry not, revealing that clue early didn’t spoil the game. Just wasted time. The second occasion, we mistook a symbol for a letter. This one’s on us. We didn’t realise that this symbol existed on the decoder, so when it popped up, we looked for the Riddle Card, only to be met with another clue that meant nothing to us. Oops. I wonder how many people have done the same thing, and what could be fixed with a simple change in design. It doesn’t punish you for messing it up, but I honestly wish it did a bit so it would at least feel intentionally misleading.
The puzzles, for me, were...okay? Unfortunately, everything in this playthrough is in contrast to the other game, as now I have something to compare it to. There were a few that stood out (the “organ” clue is a ton of fun, and the first clue is straightforward and approachable to ease you in), but these puzzles just didn’t entice me like the last one. Okay isn’t bad, by any means, I just wasn’t particularly blown away. Equally, some just felt janky. There was particularly one clue where we were undeniably going down the wrong path, but arrived at the correct answer. A clue that we solved incorrectly lead us to a card that progressed the puzzle forward. We then received an answer card with an image, not an X, that said “Your answer is presumably correct but ______” (redacted for spoiler-free purposes). The issue was, we weren’t “presumably correct” - which reads to a player as “you’re on the right lines” - we were miles off. Still unsure as to how that happened. Outside of that clue though, there was just a lack of flow, even to the point that we found the ending jarringly sudden.
Two players felt like a sweet spot for this type of game. We both had a decent look at all the clues, there weren’t four heads all trying to ogle one riddle. Our puzzle solving abilities are contrasts to one another, so we both had a fair range of riddles that played to our strengths. We didn’t have another brain to fill in the gap though so there were a few puzzles that didn’t click. However, that’s part of the fun, and when you finally solve it there’s a wave of satisfaction that comes with it. We completed the game in around 100 minutes and used 4 clues (almost identical to our score in The Return to the Abandoned Cabin), which means we achieved 5/10 stars. I’m happy with that. Still new to the style of EXIT, running into a few bumps, but still leaving with a fair score for an intermediate game is impressive in my eyes.
A quick aside before the conclusion, I love the scoring system for The Hunt Through Amsterdam. Take less time but use more hints? You’ll get the same score as a team that took longer but didn’t use any hints. Use less time and less hints, you’re a legend. 10 stars to you my friend, and well deserved.
The End of the Canal
Congratulations, you’ve finished EXIT: The Hunt Through Amsterdam. How was it?
Fun! A little unsatisfying but I’d still recommend it. Indisputably beautiful, and still overall provided that EXIT game experience you’d expect. Incredibly affordable, especially if you buy it from Zatu with their never-ending sales. This game felt more like a scavenger hunt than an escape room, and that’s awesome either way. If you want to emulate that experience elsewhere you’d expect to pay a lot more, and what EXIT can fit in their little boxes is always impressive. Although I’d love to, I’ve never been to Amsterdam, but that didn’t tar my experience with this game. It’ll go down well with any audience.
If you do enjoy these games, I’d also recommend Unlock. You pay a little extra but get 3 experiences. The games play slightly differently (you don’t damage components in Unlock, which makes them transferable to other game groups and eventually replayable (possibly)) but they’re still incredibly fun, and I think most players who love one will love the other.