Golden bear toys have just launched an additional, new, set of three Trapped Escape Room Game Packs to add to their previous Trapped Escape Room Games. In this post, we review The Zoo Trapped Escape Room Game.
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If you like this then you may also be interested in our review of Codenames, Code Piano, Sparkle Science Science Kit.
Page Contents
What are The three New Trapped Escape Room Game Packs
Like the previously released set of games, these are aged 8+, for 2-6 players and include an easy, medium and hard escape room set up.
Easy Level
The Zoo – It’s the day you’ve been waiting for – your annual trip to the zoo! The meerkats have escaped and your mission is to track down the missing meerkats and safely return them to their enclosure. Can you find them all before anyone notices? Good Luck, The future of the zoo is in your hands!
Medium Level
Mission To Mars – You and your crew are on an exploratory mission to Mars, the hopeful replacement to Earth. You’ve arrived at Mars but there appears to be a system failure with the sensors which means you’ll have to manually land the spaceship. Think back to your training; steady the thrusters and land the ship the fate of humanity is in your hands.
Hard Level
Flight 927 – Not long into your holiday flight, the plane plunges. Over the tannoy the pilot shouts, “Brace for impact!” Panicked, you adopt the brace position – and then… Darkness! As you regain consciousness, you open your eyes and realise the plane is down! Now it’s up to you to call for rescue. Can you get into the cockpit, send out a distress signal – and save the day?
What’s In The Zoo Trapped Escape Room Game Pack?
Inside the the Zoo package you’ll find everything you need to create your escape room. It contains
- Instruction leaflet
- Feeding schedule
- zoo map
- Penguin enclosure
- 8 meerkat cards
- 3 meerkat enclosures
- clue cards
- origami paper
- clue book and clue reader
- final envelope
- bulldog clip
You will also need (not included in the box)
- scissors
- glue
- pens/pencils
- scrap paper
- optional calculator (some simple maths is required)
How To Setup The Zoo Trapped Escape Room Game Pack
The great thing about The Zoo Trapped Escape Room game is that it’s very quick to set up and should only take 5-10 minutes. All the puzzle cards and posters come with instructions on the back.
Most of them tell you to place them face down so the puzzles and clues aren’t being seen. This is to prevent people from solving clues prematurely. But if you’re setting up the room ready for the kids then you can leave the puzzle images facing up.
The game comes with double-sided sticky tape so you can attach the clues to the walls but we chose to place them on a flat surface and attached them to zoo animal soft toys we had!
How To Play The Zoo Trapped Escape Room Game Pack
The aim of the game is to solve the puzzle cards to find numbers that will make a 24 hour clock time. These times are animal feeding times and to see if they are correct kids will need to check their time against the feeding timetable. Younger kids may need a little help as the feeding schedule uses a 24hr clock.
If they are correct they can take a meerkat card and place it in the meerkat enclosure. Adult or kids can also double check their answers using the clue book.
The puzzle cards are a nice mix of text clues, visual clues, puzzle-solving, code-breaking, origami, paper cutting, and of course a bit of maths. If you get stuck solving a puzzle you can use the numbers on the back of the puzzle card to get clues from the clue book.
Once all 8 meerkats have been rescued players can open the final envelope which gives one final puzzle to be solved.
At the end of the game you can give yourself a score based on how long it took you to solve the clues and how many clues you needed.
What Did We Think Of The Zoo Trapped Escape Room Game Pack
My girls (14, 14, 15) really enjoyed The Zoo Trapped Escape Room Game and solved it in 50 minutes without needing any clues.
Even though it was the easier of the three games, there were a few clues that needed a bit of extra thought and teamwork to complete.
I liked the variety of clues used to solve the puzzles. Some were visual, some of the puzzle cards needed to be used together, there was a little bit of crafting involved with the origami, and of course a bit of maths. This mixture means that everyone playing should find something they are strong at. I also felt there was a nice mix of obvious and not-so-obvious clues which helps keep the game moving. There’s nothing worse than all clues being difficult to solve.
Using the clue reader is an added bit of fun and I also liked that each puzzle had three clues available.
If you’ve never played an escape room game then The Zoo is a great place to start. It gives a great introduction to the type of clues used in escape room. I’d say the age of this is 8-12 depending on whether you’re a novice player. But older kids will still enjoy solving this.
It’s the perfect game for family games nights, parties, playdates, rainy day play and would even work well outdoors in a park or garden. Just remember that you also need scissors, pens/pencils, scrap paper, and glue.
The Zoo Trapped Escape Room Decoration Ideas
One of the great things about escape room games is that you can dress up and decorate your room and incorporate them into party themes. Some ideas to use when playing The Zoo are;
- use zoo animal soft toys as puzzle placeholders
- use animal balloons
- print off animal colouring sheets
- have a face painting station
- make toilet roll/kitchen roll zoo animals
- colour in animal masks
- turn your kitchen into a zoo cafeteria/restaurant
- make cardboard box cars to travel to the escape room in
- make of buy paper leaves to decorate your walls