Zatu Gold Award
EXIT: The Magical Academy

EXIT: The Magical Academy

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Spells, elixirs, magical powers: you thought your studies at the academy couldn’t get any more exciting. But when a gang of polterbolds — small, pointy-toothed creatures from the netherworld — shows up, chaos breaks out. Can you stop the creatures before they literally tear your school apart?
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Category Tags , SKU Z-THKO-692883 Availability 3+ in stock
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Awards

Rating

  • Artwork
  • Complexity
  • Replayability
  • Player Interaction
  • Component Quality

You Might Like

  • Great mixture of easier and harder puzzles to solve
  • Story suitable for younger players looking for a challenge
  • Simple set up and linear gameplay

Might Not Like

  • Only intended to be played once
  • Not quite as easy as advertised
  • Some puzzles would be harder to do as a solo player
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Description

Spells, elixirs, magical powers: you thought your studies at the academy couldn’t get any more exciting. But when a gang of polterbolds — small, pointy-toothed creatures from the netherworld — shows up, chaos breaks out. Can you stop the creatures before they literally tear your school apart?

Wizardry and Wonder or Pesky Polterbolds?

I’ve worked my way through many of Kosmos’ EXIT games over the last year and a half, I thoroughly enjoy the escape room feel of the games and I love how they each tell their own story and make me feel challenged in a fun and exciting way. In EXIT The Magical Academy, you are a witch or wizard at a school of magic, enjoying your lessons, when suddenly the room is filled with Polterbolds, magical creatures that are hell-bent on destroying the school. I was keen to see what Kosmos had in store for us with EXIT The Magical Academy, as one of the more recent additions to my collection, and one of the newest EXIT games I’ve played.

Game Unboxing and Setup

Just like the other games in Kosmos’ EXIT series, EXIT The Magical Academy has very little setup time. Unwrapping and then opening the box brought me a great sense of satisfaction, as with all new games, and within just a moment we were ready to begin. Inside the box is of course your game instructions, the only thing you should be looking at until you start the game. You’ll also find a stack of cards that will need separating into their three distinct piles (don’t peek though), a “decoder disk” for solving the riddles you’ll face, and a particularly large number of “strange items” which will be used during gameplay. The instructions ask you to prepare the strange items before play, so EXIT The Magical Academy involves a quick bit of popping out components before you begin. Then, place everything where all players can see, and begin your challenge of saving your school! P.S. I highly recommend you arm yourselves with some scissors and a pencil before you begin.

Gameplay Overview – Spoilers are included, you will be warned before you read them!

Don’t worry, you’re safe to read this bit, I’ll be sure to warn you well before you reach the spoilers.

When you’re ready to begin your game, start the timer and pick up the playbook, in here you’ll be given the first riddle cards and off you go solving the puzzles. As with the other EXIT games rated on the easier side (Kosmos’s own rating of 2/5 difficulty) the book included in EXIT The Magical Academy is set out in a linear format, making sure you’re always on the right page for the riddle you’re solving and not having to flick back and forth through the book to decipher which bit you should be looking at.

SPOILER ALERT – The very first riddle involves folding and cutting up the book (sad face) which always makes me feel sad no matter how many times I’ve had to cut up components. I hate to say it, but it really is essential to do as you’ll struggle to even get off the starting block without it this time.

The game gave us a lovely range of challenges from the very first riddle which I solved in a matter of moments, to a much more complex one we just couldn’t see the answer to no matter how hard we tried. Our brains were active as we moved from puzzle to puzzle, solving some fast and some slow, and with a big sigh of what could best be described as stupidity when we realised we’d made a pretty big error with one of them (oops).

SPOILER ALERT – I love how EXIT The Magical Academy incorporated some unique puzzle solving styles I haven’t seen yet in other EXIT games, namely having to scratch off the surface of some of the components (another sad face) a bit like you would with a scratchcard in order to solve the riddle, or the very awkward drawing on the decoder disk that we struggled to make sense of even though we knew what we were doing. We even came across a page in the book we had no use for which threw us off entirely!

Final Thoughts

EXIT The Magical Academy was great fun to play and my husband agrees that it was a perfect game for a bit of evening fun. If you’re into the magical world or strange creatures from other planes and you love to solve puzzles, then this game is for you. I loved the uniqueness of some of the riddles compared to the other EXIT games I’ve played in the past and I loved the story. Despite this not being a traditional “escape in time, or else” theme, the story of chasing monsters around whilst trying to cast a spell on them was exciting, and… SPOLER ALERT… I love it when the puzzles make you think outside the literal box as you have to use the instruction booklet and the box itself to help you on your journey.

My Own Playthrough Score?

How did I do playing EXIT The Magical Academy? Well I’m sad to say I scored only 7 out of a possible 10 points (don’t worry, the scoring system is all worked out in the instruction booklet based on how long you took to finish the game and how many help cards you needed). Despite the ease of some of the riddles, the sheer difficulty with the others meant my husband and I completed our playthrough in 73 minutes with 5 help cards, making this in actual fact a fairly average score for us, although being rated on the easier side by Kosmos we were hoping to do better!

Zatu Score

Rating

  • Artwork
  • Complexity
  • Replayability
  • Player Interaction
  • Component Quality

You might like

  • Great mixture of easier and harder puzzles to solve
  • Story suitable for younger players looking for a challenge
  • Simple set up and linear gameplay

Might not like

  • Only intended to be played once
  • Not quite as easy as advertised
  • Some puzzles would be harder to do as a solo player