Star Wars: Unlock! - First Play!

20th April 2022

It's a Wednesday and we're round Simon's for an evening of gaming.

Unlock! The Escape Game are a series of games drawing inspiration from escape room games and as you'll have gathered from the name, Star Wars: Unlock is a Star Wars themed Unlock! game.

Time to escape Star Wars!

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Note: Unlock! games come with 3 scenarios and in the case of Star Wars: Unlock!, we played the Secret Mission on Jedha scenario, one of the harder scenarios and which involved being nasty Imperial spies running round a desert.

What's in a game?

• App: Star Wars: Unlock! is a app-drive game, meaning that a player will need to download the app to a smartphone or tablet.
• Cards: The game is primarily a card game and comes with several different types of colour coded cards. Cards are numbered in the top left corner and also display numbers/letters on their backs. Some cards will also display icons instructing players to discard specific cards. Along the bottom will be further instructions or flavour text.
  Each of the 3 scenarios has it's own deck.
  Starting cards: Each of the scenarios has its own starting cards that will kick off the scenario.
  Object cards: These cards are red and blue, they feature a number in the top left corner and depending on the colour a sort of jigsaw puzzle icon in the top right corner. Red and blue cards can be combined which each other, more on this below.
  Machine cards: Green cards are used to represent machines or vehicles and work in conjunction with the app
  Code cards: Like machine cards, these are used in conjunction with the app. These yellow cards are used in relation to clues, secret numbers and the like.
  Other cards: Grey is used to represent other cards and are used to represent locations or other objects, points of interest and results as required.
• Map: The Secret Mission of Jedha comes with a folded paper map of a desert region and is gridded with coordinates.

Star Wars: Unlock! is a card game with a map, quality wise it's exactly what you would expect of cards and a small paper map, which is to say; perfectly acceptable.

Art-wise, like all Star Wars licensed games I've seen, the quality is consistently high throughout. I don't know whether the art was created specifically for this game or was sourced from what must be a huge archive of art that has been produced and accumulated over the decades but regardless, it's all looks good and has a appropriately Star Wars feel to it

A few icons are used throughout the game, they're pretty clear and self-evident, I can't imagine they would prove an obstacle to players.

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How's it play?
Setup

• The deck: Do not look at any cards in the deck and leave them all face-down. During play, players will search for the cards they need via the numbered backs.
• ​Starting cards: Select the starting cards as required and follow the instructions on them.
• App: Launch the app, the timer will begin counting down from 60 minutes.

On to play
Star Wars: Unlock! is all about discovery and deciphering clues which will eventually lead to the scenario's conclusion. Functionally, the game works a little like a gamebook where players would get to choose which numbered paragraph to read, except in this game it's done with numbered cards instead of paragraphs. There's also a bit more to Star Wars: Unlock! than most gamebooks though, especially in relation to how the app is utilised.
It's tricky to describe how the game plays, especially without some sort of spoiler but basically, the players collectively try to solve the puzzles presented to them.
What follows are descriptions for actions players can take.

• Choices: Location cards will frequently display an environment with numbers attached to points-of-interest. Players can simply take the cards with those numbers from the deck to gain further information about those points-of-interest.
• Combining: A red card can be combined with a blue card by adding their 2 numbers together to get a 3rd number, the card for this 3rd number can them be pulled from the deck. There will be times that multiple red and blue cards can be used create multiple 3rd numbers.
• Hidden Numbers: All the cards in Star Wars: Unlock! are illustrated and some of these illustrations may contain hidden numbers. If spotted by players can be pulled from the deck to provide them with something that was secret.
• Machines: When players acquire these cards, their number can be punched into the app which will in turn provide them with a puzzle or problem to solve.
• Codes: Sometimes a card will present the players with a dead-end such as a locked door. Players must find and enter the code into the app to proceed through the door - the app will tell them which card to draw next.
• Coordinates: The Secret of Jedha scenario comes with a map and this is more than just cosmetic. At some point the players will find themselves traipsing around a desert and where they go will be managed by entering the coordinates into the app.
• Penalties: When some cards are drawn, typically red herrings or the result of failing at something, they will require players to press the penalty button on the app, this will usually deduct 1 minute from the countdown timer.

​Endgame
There's no way to lose Star Wars: Unlock! per se, when the countdown reaches 0 it instead simply goes into 'negative time'.
After reaching a scenario's conclusion, the app will then rate the player's collective performance from 1-5.
Computer says you get only 1 Star!

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Overall
Star Wars: Unlock! pulls some clever tricks with how it uses cards and how it combines them with the app to provide some engaging obstacles to overcome.
We're not geniuses by any stretch but nor are thick, so for the most part the scenario was well balanced, we were stumped for a while on a couple of occasions and referred to the app's hint system for a card once.  Otherwise the game was more or less straightforward.
The play time is fairly brisk in Star Wars: Unlock! with players facing with some unusual problems to solve while under the pressure of a ticking clock. 

The box states that 1-6 people can play but I'm sceptical about this. I just don't think that there's enough to do to occupy 4 people, let alone 6! By the the game's very nature, there tends to be a lot interconnectivity between cards and the clues they represent. This means that it's not particularly conducive for solving challenges to split cards between players and as a result, the cards will tend to be be hogged by some players while others are left twiddling their thumbs.
Playing with 3 people might be OK, 2 players and you're golden.

I'm also not a fan of app-driven games and licensed ones even less so: Eventually that game license will eventually and what happens to the apps distribution then?
Having said that, there's little replay value to the game, once all 3 scenarios are completed successfully, players will have no reason to return to the game.

​Putting those (Non game.) criticisms aside, if you like puzzles and problem-solving, then this may well appeal to you and if you also like Star Wars, then doubly so. Especially since it's also a fairly accessible crossover or gateway game the could attract fans who are non-gamers.