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This is a spoiler-free review. I won't be discussing any of the specific puzzles or their solutions within this review.
From a game mechanic and execution viewpoint, The Enchanted Forest uses everything in the box in unique and exceptional ways. It really captures the excitement and challenge of what an Exit/Escape Room should be. It alternately makes you feel brilliant and stupid and does so in equal measure. The $14.95 MSRP is more than worth it, especially if you divide that among four players who get to experience the thrills of solving it. We finished our experience in just over 100 minutes...and that is not counting at least that many minutes we have spent talking about and examining our efforts since then.
The game states it supports one to four players but the real answer is: The number of players you can comfortably sit in front of the components/puzzles. Our game was four players with myself sitting in a position where I was viewing everything upside-down. Which, honestly, was probably an advantage for us since I was looking at all the puzzles from the proverbial “Different Angle.” Nothing in the game restricts it to having more than four actual players, since you are all working together to reach a solution and it is not as if you are assigned roles or characters to play.
The Enchanted Forest provides plenty of chances to overthink and underthink. The initial puzzle we completely over-thought, breezing past the actual solution in the first few minutes only to double back and say “Oh, it can't be that easy, could it?” Maybe that was just us knocking the rust off of our brains to get into the proper mindset.
This is a destructible game, taking it's clue from Legacy Games where you alter or destroy portions of the game but, in this case, you are doing it in order to solve it. Anyone who has spent time playing these type of escape room games probably know they usually get passed around or traded once they have been played once. But Exit has more than leaned into cleansing, folding and manipulating every aspect of the game. Maybe it is a “backdoor”way to eliminate second-hand copies from being passed around but the execution of the destructible bits and the freedom of writing on and cutting pieces is brilliant, so I don't fault this progression/destruction in the least.
The Enchanted Forest is rated two out of five stars for difficulty. One thing that this means is that it is laid out in a linear fashion. You start at the beginning of the clue book and work your way through and almost every puzzle has it's own page. If one of the challenges you are looking for is finding the path and not simply following it, the higher difficulty Exit games might have more appeal to you.
Exit uses what I call (probably inaccurately) a Double Blind solution system. When attempting to solve a puzzle, you are told to draw a card. Sometimes the card is a simply “X” which means the solution was incorrect or it may direct you to draw a second card appropriate to the puzzle you are solving. This effectively eliminates any accidental spoilers from any incorrect guesses.
If you have never tried an Escape Room game, The enchanted forest is a great jumping on point. If you haven't played one recently, it is worth snatching up just to experience the great strides that have been made in the genre.
A review copy of this release was provided by the publisher.
