Escape Room in a Box: Time Drifters

Review

Game Description

“Escape Room in a Box: Time Drifters is a story about two time travelers – Isabel and Kira – partners who have explored the farthest reaches of time, from ancient dynasties to the birth of the dinosaurs, and even the distant future. But disaster struck on their latest adventure, splitting their time machine in two and marooning them each in a different place and time!”

Personal Experience

I picked up both parts of Escape Room in a Box: Time Drifters shortly after I played through Escape Room in a Box: Flashback back in 2022. Since then they’ve been drifting through time on my backlog shelf, waiting for me to get around to save them from their time travel dilemma. They were sitting under Crimes and Capers and when I pulled that game out the other week, I saw this game’s super-cool diptych artwork and pulled it out too.

The game is a product of the pandemic era and is designed for two groups to play each half separately and then work over zoom to solve the bonus puzzle. (I imagine that finding another person to play over Zoom with is why they sat for so long on my shelf.) I decided to proceed on my own anyway, playing the games and their bonus puzzle back-to-back-to-back. These games have a ‘time limit’ of 75 minutes apiece, which I dutifully ignored. However, that seems to be a fairly generous amount of time as each part of the experience took me about 40 minutes to play through, with it taking another 20 minutes to make it through the bonus puzzle.

Narrative

The pair of games has a novel conceit, Kira and Isabel are a pair of time travelers whose time machine has split apart stranding them apart from each other. Each of the two experiences represents one of them trying to fix their half of the machine so they can reunite. Each of the two characters has a distinctive voice, Kira seems a little more analytical, Isabel a little less so. But aside from that, the description on the back of the box is basically what you’re getting. That’s not terribly surprising or unjustified for a mass market game being sold for under $20, but a little disappointing compared to the comparatively deep narratives of the experiences I typically play.

That said, being a mass market game allows it to use economy of scale to its advantage, coming with some very decent components for the price. The mechanical puzzle boxes are especially impressive for the price and are a definite upgrade from the plastic box + padlocks system from the previous two Escape Room in a Box games. Also, it bears repeating, that split box art is just rad.

Puzzle Play

Despite the intention that each half be played by a separate group, playing them both myself was perfectly fine. Each half of the game is its own distinct experience, with fully unique puzzles between them. Like previous Escape Room in a Box games, the difficulty level ranged from somewhat easy to an easy medium. Something built to challenge but not stump a mass audience. Like the previous games, the puzzle play was pretty good, punching well above what its price point and department store placement would suggest. In fact, you can see a clear progression in quality from the two previous games in the series to these two, with fewer issues to gum up the puzzle solving process as time goes on.

Both games do a great job out of getting mileage out of their components, with both having sets of components that are reused multiple times throughout the main experience and the bonus experience. It’s an impressive density, likely born out of the necessity of keeping costs down for the mass market.

The bonus puzzles were a fun addition. The game advertises them as an hourlong experience, but they only took me about twenty minutes to make my way through them. Though, to be fair, part of the challenge was meant to be having two groups play them over zoom, each with hidden information, a sort of lighter take on Taco Twosday. Without the zoom element they were fairly easy to solve, but fun nonetheless.

There were a few minor issues worth noting. One of the puzzles in the Isabel experience required both very good lighting and a magnifying glass for me to be able to solve it properly. One puzzle involved distinguishing colors. It’s almost a good example of a color puzzle, in that the colored components have different textures to distinguish them from each other. That’s spoiled when the puzzle asks you to choose the red component, without some clue about which textured component was green and which was red. I guessed correctly, but it was a minor stumbling block in an otherwise accessible experience.

The biggest issue is that the game requires accessing a website to access the hints for the experiences and to enter the solution for the bonus experience. Unfortunately, visiting the website listed on the various components just takes you to a generic Mattel landing page. While this is the first time I’ve experienced this issue in a puzzle game, it is an apt reminder that games with online components are only good for as long as the games’ publishers are willing to pay for web hosting and domain names. While video games and board games have dedicated archival and preservation movements, I don’t know of something similar for puzzle games, which, by virtue of their one shot nature, tend to be more transient in nature.

Fortunately for this experience, the hints and solution sites are still available, just not at the website listed. For anyone that might be looking for them, here’s where you can find them—as of today, anyway:

• Hints for Kira’s Story
• Hints for Isabel’s Story
• Hints for Bonus Experience
• Site to enter Bonus Experience Solution

Recommendation

Overall, these games were another solid chapter in the Escape Room in a Box series and are an exceptional value for their price. They appear to be out of print now, but can still be found at many department store retailers for under $15 apiece.

While there are better experiences out there from smaller creators, these are a good, cheap entry-point into the hobby for newer puzzle gamers.