Card Game: Unlock! Squeek & Sausage from Asmodee

On our first ever card game review, we look at Unlock! Squeek & Sausage from Asmodee, a cooperative card game inspired by escape rooms that use a simple system which allows you to search scenes, combine objects, and solve puzzles. Yup, all with a deck of cards!

In recent years, Escape Rooms have mushroomed around the world and board game publishers are capitalizing on the popularity by creating an "escape room in a box” experiences for a fraction of the price. There are several games/scenarios published by various publishers and even crowd-funded on Kickstarter, utilising different game mechanics.

Unlock!, however, is one of the few that utilize only cards and a companion app that provides clues, check codes, monitor time remaining, etc.

SETUP

The card backs feature (at first glance) random numbers and the face cards are color-coded: yellow cards have four-digit unlock code, grey cards are informational, blue and red cards combine to open/discover new things. The basic idea is, you pair the blue card and red card, add their numbers together and reveal that card if it’s in the deck (hence the number on the card backs).

I would recommend a calculator handy to help with the addition if you are playing with kids. Also, the deck order out of the box is random. Considering you have 60 minutes on the clock, I would re-order the cards sequentially (numerical and alphabetical) to save on time when looking for cards as you discover new clues.


GAMEPLAY

The game mechanics are relatively simple- on each scene, you search for clues, hidden objects, and information. Pair them up by combining the blue and red cards and reveal the next card for more clues/information and progressively moving on to the next scene.



However, Beware! Many red and blue cards are not meant to be combined as some combination will result in time penalties- 2 to 3 minutes! That is pretty heavy as it deters players from exploring and trying new combos.

We were stuck on the first scene for 15 minutes trying to figure out what to do. Like Escape rooms in the real world, you can use call for hints to keep you moving. There's where the app comes in. Each card is associated with a number, and you can type that number in to get help with the card. The hint system is very well done. It has 3 levels of reveal without giving too much away initially.

Once you get to a yellow card and obtain the hidden 4-digit code, you type the code in the app to progress (or not) to the next scene.

OVERALL

Squeek & Sausage is our first Unlock! game and We really enjoyed it! The cartoonish artwork suits the theme and scenarios well. The puzzles are consistent, challenging but not overly difficult. There several Eureka moments and a few puzzles that make you swell up with pride in solving them. The gameplay flows nicely as well without feeling a sense of frustration or lost.

The only gripe we had are the hidden objects. These are simple, tiny numbers that, if you actually spot them, allow you to reveal the corresponding cards. The app has a setting for beginners that prompts you to look out for these hidden objects.

Also, the app provides ambient sound for each scenario, which I think is a nice touch. It adds to the feel of being in a locked room.  We found that the game mechanic works really well and it is quite fun once you understood the system. We took an hour and 20 minutes to solve all the puzzles and used the hint 2-3 times.

Looking forward to the next Unlock! game and we hope to solve all the puzzles before the clock hits zero.