Thames & Kosmos Adventure Games - The Volcanic Island

Loved this, a mix off the escape room games and make your own story. Better value for money than the escape room as you don't destroy. It's made of quality materials easy to learn and challenging while playing but not to difficult.

Great fun for 2 to 4 players, the game has interesting art and mechanics and took us about 3 hours to play through. This is a story-driven game, with some interesting choices and a few light riddles and puzzles, an engaging way to spend an evening with friends or family.There is a free helper app that can read the game text for you like an audiobook, and will also teach you the game, ideal for first time players.This specific scenario is set in a medieval fantasy world, you start off trapped in a dungeon that you must escape. You progress through 3 chapters, each with clearly defined goals, and make choices and solve puzzles as you go. There are several possible endings, depending on how well you did and some of your choices.

Quite a clever little game, well packaged and manufactured.It has 3 chapters, each taking about 90 minutes. I can't really go into too much detail about the story other than to say your goal is to escape a dungeon. There's lots of puzzles to solve and loot to collect along the way. The game mechanics are quite well thought out (but I found the ending a bit confusing). There's also a free helper app to read out all the descriptions if you don't want to.However, once you've played through it the first time you've seen almost all that the game has to offer. There are a few points where you can choose to do one thing or another and I did miss an opportunity to figure out a puzzle before I was blocked from going back, but I think I saw 95% of what the game had to offer in one sitting. I wouldn't want to play it again just for those few alternate choices. Having played it solo, playing with friends after would put me at a massive advantage as to knowing how things will play out.Also, I would avoid playing all 3 chapters in one sitting as it outstayed it's welcome a little bit and had me using the help option a bit more than I probably should have toward the end, but that's not really the fault of the game, rather mine.I passed it on to my niece, who isn't really a board game sort of person, but she and her other half said they really enjoyed it.So, a good game, but bear in mind it's probably a one-and-done.

I really like this game, especially if you have older children. It is a nice cooperative game that can be played and put away if needed to come back to at a later date. Great value for money as can be played again. Can be played alone too.

We love these games! Perfect for lockdown and to use up a good few hours! I love the fact you have to work together to solve the puzzles, and the way the story plays out is brilliant. Prepare for a few hair pulling moments where you just can't figure out what goes with what, and then the lightbulb moments where it all becomes clear. As a tip, definately download the app. Its not essential, but we found it really helped bring out the story! I've only knocked off a star as there isn't much replay value, but perhaps in 2024 when we're still in lockdown I'll dig it out again!

Not as much fun as the exit games for us but well thought out and good quality. I think for the price it's worth trying to see if you enjoy it. There is replay ability in the fact that you don't destroy any of the materials however I can't imagine you wanting to play it after you've figured the story out.We found this Adventure game limited, there was always an obvious route or answer with no leaps of intuition or puzzle to work out. Yes you need to think and use the correct tools for the job, send the best person etc. But these decisions are pretty obvious to figure out, if you make a mistake you'll immediately work out how to fix it for the rest of the game.We got to the end of level 2 before we gave up as it was all the same stuff and getting repetitive.If you had the same experience as us try the Exit games by the same company which are much more fun.

We love escape rooms so were looking for something similar to keep us occupied during Lockdown. This game kept us (2 adults and a 13 year old) entertained for literally the whole day! Simple to get started and loved having the app which provided a spoken description of each step (much better than reading everything!). It was fairly simple to work out how to combine objects to solve tasks- the tricky thing was locating all the objects, as they are in lots of different rooms. We found keeping detailed notes of the objects and characters we met really helped! Our top tip is to make sure you listen to ALL the information, as we initially missed something in our hurry to combine every object so had to go back and listen to everything again! So take your time and analyse everything in every room carefully. You could probably play this game again once or twice as there are alternative routes to success- Eg: choosing different characters to help you or a different path to follow. Also, it would be quite good fun to try to beat your first score or best time. It would be a good memory test!

Incredible work by Thames & Kosmos with this game. For an adventure game to truly work, you want multiple options that span across different story lines whilst also providing an equally stimulating experience. This is clearly an evolution on the last two adventure games and is a much more expanded game and arguably worth double its asking price.If you remotely like board games, puzzle game and role playing game then this is absolutely up your street.I would thoroughly recommend using the helper app to read out the entries with this game, unlike the previous two, the entries here are much larger and you will spend a LOT of time reading. The helper app makes it a bit easier to digest and to focus on the puzzle at hand.