Mystery Mail Enchanted Forest - ELUDE Escape Rooms Review

 

Hi everyone

Julia and Darren, the owners of ELUDE Escape Rooms in Galston kindly invited my daughter and I to beta test one of their first "Mystery Mails" entitled Enchanted Forest.  The idea behind the Mystery Mails is that customers can purchase an at home escape room experience/set of puzzles for someone they know and ELUDE will then post them out to that person without identifying who arranged and paid for it.  Only when the player completes the experience and enters the results at a specified web address will they learn who sent them the Mystery Mail.  

Mystery Mails can therefore be sent as anonymous presents for Christmas, birthdays, etc.  After having completed this experience, my daughters and I sent another Mystery Mail to my wife for Mother's Day (which she and my eldest daughter recently completed and both enjoyed).  Enchanted Forest was our 145th escape room (or escape room-like) experience).   

My daughter was 7 years old at the time that we played Enchanted Forest.  We both really enjoyed the puzzles, which were fun and well-themed.  My daughter needed some help with the algebra puzzles, as she hadn't yet learned how algebra works at school.  But otherwise, she pretty much completed the rest of the puzzles by herself (or with some very minor hints from me).  The quality of the printing was very strong and my daughter loved the ELUDE wax seal on the outside of the envelope :-)

We completed Enchanted Forest in a little under an hour.  I think this represents really great value for money, given the very reasonable price tag of only $20. 

I think ELUDE is one of those companies that adapted to Covid really well, having offered both Mystery Mails and online escape rooms to players who were jonesing for a fix.  

I can see Mystery Mails being really popular for families in particular, and depending on the age of the child/ren, would be really great for children or even for kids' parties. ELUDE now offer 6 different Mystery Mails, some of which are aimed at older children (16+) and adults. So there is something for everyone.

We had a lot of fun and my daughter's review was that "it was really, really fun!!!! I liked it 100 out of 10".

Where:                        Play at home

Virtual Room Type:    Non Live

Duration:                    Unlimited time to complete (estimated 1-2 hours)

Themes:                     6 mystery mails (and 3 real life escape rooms)

Cost:                           $20 (but we beta tested this for the owners)

Overall Rating:           A really fun, family-friendly escape room experience at home

More details:              http://www.eludegames.com/