For all the hesitating you’re going to experience the next time you’re figuring out which game you want to buy, remember my words: We’re always fans of games that allow you to lower or ratchet up the difficulty, and you can easily do that in Escape. All you have to do is add or remove certain tiles to make the game easier or more difficult. Escape: The Curse of the Temple scores very high on our “let’s play again” game meter. Because it’s so fun and only lasts 10 minutes, we’ve never just played the game one time. We always play at least 2 games and most times many more than 2. This definitely goes on our list of Games That Are Hard to Play Just Once.

Escape: The Curse of the Temple is a real time game in which you and your fellow players have 10 minutes to escape a cursed temple before it collapses. You’ll achieve this by rolling your five dice, which will enable you to discover and explore the temple chamber by chamber. You'll activate magic gems to break the temple’s curse and then find the exit chamber and escape. For the Curses module, every time you discover a chamber with a purple mask on it, you immediately draw a curse card. A curse can be broken by rolling the icons shown at the bottom, but you can continue playing without breaking the curse ... if you dare. The curses (from left to right) are: Escape: The Curse of the Temple is a cooperative game in which players must escape from a temple which is cursed before the temple collapses and kills one or more explorers, thereby causing everyone to lose. It suits every kind of group. You can play it on your own (in which case you’ll roll 7 dice rather than 5), with your friends, with gamers and non-gamers or with your family. In fact, it’s one of the few games in my collection which will tempt my teen off his games console to play something with the family. The fact that it’s cooperative – you’re playing together to beat the game – is a bonus in a household like mine with competitive siblings. Once the exit tile is revealed, players can attempt to escape the temple by moving to that tile, then rolling a number of blue dice equal to the magic gems that haven't been removed from the gem depot. Thus, the more gems you find, the easier it is to escape the temple. When a player escapes, he gives one die to a player of his choice. If all players escape before the third countdown, everyone wins; if not, everyone loses, no matter how many players did escape.One last note: Escape is definitely going on my best games of 2012 list — I especially made time to write this review so it'd be eligible! — but it's not for everyone. Some people just don't like the stress of making decisions under pressure. And some people just don't like rolling dice. (Okay, I'm not sure I know many of those, but I imagine it's true.) If you can't handle lots of noisy die-rolling and shouting for help and tile-flipping, then you may want to pass on this particular ancient temple. For the rest of you, though, it's time to Escape! YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: 10 Best Real-Time Board Games | 10 Best Murder Mystery Board Games | 10 Best Nautical Board Games What would be too much : Robinson Crusoe, while being a great cooperative game, there’s just too much strategy and not enough action. I have played this about 10 tens now and the novelty has worn off. You find that in a panic some people are just not honest and wizz around without really throwing the correct dice, easily done.

And don’t leave others behind in your race to escape because if only 1 person fails to escape the temple, the whole group loses! The final gong signals that the temple is about to collapse. If any of the players fail to escape before time runs out, it’s game over for everybody… ‘Curses’ and ‘Treasures’ Expansions You like the Indiana Jones movies and how he always escapes the temples, tunnels and traps just in the last second? Here is just the game for you. The temple around you is collapsing and you have 10 minutes to find the exit … so now … ESCAPE! Lost dice. In this game it’s not unusual that dice go off the table. With this curse, those dice are lost for the rest of the game! Even if you manage to cure yourself, those dice are lost.

The Die Icons

A new chamber from the draw pile must be placed next to an entrance on a face-up tile. Die icons with a red frame

Teleporters: used/modified code from NSZ's Kino Teleporter Script and Koentje's Origins Portals Script (HarryBo21, D-2-K, Madgaz, Scobalula, DTXzPorter, Script Lord) Escape: The Curse of the Temple is as much of an adrenaline rush as….well, actually escaping a collapsing cursed temple!You get 19 well-sized and chunky cardboard chamber tiles for the basic game, plus one narrower gem depot tile. On top of that, there are 13 curse and treasure chamber tiles for the built-in expansions. These are accompanied by 14 cardboard curse cards and 13 treasure tiles.