Tabletop Tuesday - Escape: The Curse of the Temple

Welcome to another edition of Tabletop Tuesday - Your weekly exploration into games of dice, cards, luck and more of the Tabletop world.

This week's game...the game of frantic dice rolls and shiny jewels that is Escape: The Curse of the Temple.

Players: 1-5
Time: 10 Minutes
Genre: Cooperative Social Game



Escape is a unique cooperative board game that takes place in real time, meaning there are no turns or waiting to be found.  Everyone hurriedly rolls their dice simultaneously and continues rolling without pause as you all anxiously attempt to escape a cursed temple.  So be sure to have an understanding of the rules before play.  Each player starts with an adventurer inside a safe room and is equipped with five dice.  Each die can roll the following symbols: A green adventurer, red torch, blue key, cursed mask, and golden mask.  The first three symbols are used to move between rooms, access treasure, or activate gems, depending on the symbols depicted on the room tiles.  If a player rolls a cursed mask, that dice becomes inactive, unable to be rolled again until that player or another player in that room offers a golden mask roll to unfreeze it.  The goal, as you may ascertain from the name, is to find the exit and have all players escape.  The more gems players collect inside the temple, the better chance players have of escaping.

 Escaping within 10 minutes is not the only catch though, for the game is divided into 3 rounds in which players must return to the safe room (or escape) before each countdown concludes.  Any player who is not in the safe room when the second gong of the round sounds will lose one die permanently for the remaining rounds, making your escape now all the more difficult.  At the end of 10 minutes, the temple will then collapse, which if there are any players remaining inside still, everyone loses.  The game includes an audio CD that not only helps cue these timers, but also provides some really neat and apt atmosphere to the overall experience (see below YouTube video for one such included sound sample).  And as the game is specifically timed to 10 minutes (minus setup), it's a great game to play when you're looking for a gaming session that won't run over.  That is unless you want to immediately play again.  With the randomly constructed nature of the temples and short play time, this game has superb replay-ability.  I recommend this game for those who enjoy multitasking and don't stress easily.

If you have any questions about Escape, be sure to ask in the comments.  There are also various expansions for this game that add interesting gameplay scenarios of special treasures and devious curses.  So stay tuned for those expansions and more to be found in future installments of Tabletop Tuesday.  And happy gaming!