Welcome to our review of Space Cowboys‘ Star Wars: UNLOCK. This game is one of many UNLOCK escape room games in the series. 

This article will be a relatively short review compared with our longer reviews. Much of what happens in this game is hidden and is discoverable as you play. Detective Hawk Games is celebrating Star Wars Day this week, and we love escape rooms. We’ve heard this game has a lot of elements of those, so we thought we’d dive into Star Wars: UNLOCK and see what it’s all about.

So far, we’ve played the first two escape rooms and have to admit they are super fun. Let’s get into how this game plays and why you should take the time to check it out!

Game Overview – Star Wars: UNLOCK

Star Wars: UNLOCK is an escape room card game where players have 1 hour, usually, to work their way through a 60-card scenario. The game has the players look at cards from a numbered deck and try to decree from the pictures and content what they need to do next. Some of these cards have players interact with the free App that presents them with unique puzzles that the players must complete successfully to advance. 

Game Components

The game is pretty straightforward with its components. Inside the box are three sealed card packs. In each card pack, there is a different Star Wars-inspired scenario. The cards show a lot of information, with the number of each card serving dual purposes. It allows a player to pull the correct card from the deck. Some cards (red or blue) can combined. For instance, one red card illustrates a Star Wars key and a blue card has a chest with a keyhole, then players combine the numbers of those two cards and pull that combined card from the deck. In our example this would be an open chest.

Some cards also have numbers hidden within the picture or need to be read in specific ways (ie using a mirror). Anytime the players find a number on the cards, they can then pull that card.

Some cards have puzzles for players to figure out. These result in four-digit codes. Players then can enter these codes into the App.

The App

Speaking of the App, the Star Wars: UNLOCK App is different from the standard Unlock App. It’s more themed explicitly towards Star Wars, with the design feeling like a datapad. 

The App enhances the escape room feel. It also is necessary to play this game. The App has a hint feature for when you get stuck, a code feature (as mentioned above), and a machine feature. It also has a timer that counts down as you play.

Game Setup

Star Wars: UNLOCK‘s game setup was pretty easy. We needed to unwrap the deck for the scenario we wanted to play, open up the App to the scenario, and start the timer. That’s it!

Game Play

Without revealing the specifics of the scenarios, we’ll tell you a little bit about how you play this game. First, you start with a task. The goal of the task is to figure out a code or a card number to pull from the deck to gain the next task. The specific Star Wars tasks range from unlocking doors and tracking probe droids to fighting space battles and making the jump to hyperspace. 

In real terms, this is done by combining red and blue cards (which have numbers on them) and finding the sum of those in the deck. Some cards have hidden numbers or four-digit codes you need to enter into the App. All of this we mentioned above, but deserves reiterating here. You will be doing a lot of hunting through the scenario deck to find the “next” card.

The app has an interesting feature called “machines.” These are all mini-games that have you interact with the App in surprising ways. These we won’t spoil here, but they are definitely on the theme to the point where we had to repeat some of the actions the actual characters did in the movies.

Overall Impressions

Star Wars: UNLOCK is a fun game overall! The two games we played each took an hour. We paused the App a few times in the first game to get our bearings, but overall not bad. Once we got the hang of it, we were able to work through the second scenario with very few hints.

One thing we think could be better with these Unlock games is to use the app to develop branching paths through the story. This would increase the replay value of the game which right now there isn’t. Once you solve the scenario, going back through it again doesn’t change how it plays out.

We would recommend this to anyone who enjoys escape rooms and Star Wars. We brought this one in because of Star Wars Day next week, but we’ll be trying out the rest of the UNLOCK games in the future!

If you enjoyed this review and want to get your own copy, check it out in our store!