Fly to Barbados or Sail Down the Mississippi in the Newest Exit Games (A Spoiler Free Review)

From a passenger plane caught in an electrical storm to a theft on a Mississippi steam boat — we recently took a look at the newest games in the Thames & Kosmos Exit line.

We’ve been playing and enjoying this series for several years now. You can read our review of several previous games in the series, and a general overview of how the gameplay works, here.

The Stormy Flight

Players are crewmembers on a passenger plane. You find the plane caught in an electrical storm, and soon alarms are going off left and right. Players will have to work together to repair the plane and land it safely.

We found The Stormy Flight's difficulty to be a good fit with its two-star (out of five) difficulty rating. The puzzles could be challenging but usually not frustrating. We had one or two times when a puzzle felt a little long or arduous to solve, but in general they were accessible and satisfying, making this a good fit for families as well as adult gaming groups.

Several of the puzzles were also quite unique to the series, and we continued to be impressed by how the designers keep coming up with new implementations for the same general components that have appeared in previous entries. We had a great time with this one, and it had a lot of what we love about the Exit seires.

Theft on the Mississippi

Like Dead Man on the Orient Express, a previous entry in the series, Theft on the Mississippi has a mystery at its core, rather than a more traditional escape story that is common for this genre of game. This sets it a little apart and gives it its own flavor.

Players are investigators, traveling to New Orleans on a steamboat, when a passenger on board has important documents stolen. Players are tasked with finding them and indentifying the thief. There are eight suspects, and at the end players have to decide who is lying about their alibi. A poster of the crime scene along with suspect tokens are provided, to help players track where they believe everyone to have been when the crime occurred.

Theft on the Mississippi unfortunately fell a little flat with us. We found the puzzles in this game more difficult than we expected from the three-star rating and sometimes frustrating. We ran into several dead ends and it wasn't always clear which puzzles we should be working on. The game presents many of the suspects simultaneously, yet follows a linear format in which only one can be solved at a time — and it's not always clear which one to focus on based on the available evidence. This also makes it harder to play in larger groups, since you can't split tasks between multiple players. We enjoyed the extra challenge that solving the crime at the end provides, but found it difficult to see how to solve it, and the solution card itself didn't specify how, either. 

We did find a few of the puzzles to have some clever 'a-ha' moments, but in general found the theme (particularly for younger players) and gameplay less exciting than previous games in the series.

Disclosure: we received complimentary review copies of these games.