The Cursed Dollhouse: Giveaway & Spoiler-Free Review

The Cursed Dollhouse is an escape room game that features a five room, three-dimensional dollhouse, each with objects to manipulate and secrets to explore. Read our review, then enter our giveaway below to win a free copy!

Mr. Garrity’s daughter went missing years ago. As more children vanish around town, you decide to take matters into your own hands, break into his shed, and discover the truth.

Gameplay

To set up the game, you first build the dollhouse. Two rooms are built into the box top, two in the bottom of the box, and pieces are included to build the attic on top. There are a few objects to be put together, and the rulebook gives clear instructions as to where to place each one.

The rulebook tells you which room players start in and you read the page in the booklet for that room. In each room, there is a locked door you must get through in order to move onto the next room. In order to unlock it, you must find three symbols which you will discover by solving puzzles in the room itself and/or with the objects in the room. Some items in the room may, however, be used for future puzzles in other rooms.

There is a solution wheel included in the game. To see if you have successfully solved all three puzzles needed to move onto the next room, you rotate three of the wheels on the solution wheel to the symbols you believe are the answers, lining them up with the symbol for the specific lock you are trying to open. There are little windows in the solution wheel that can show icons when all the wheels are lined up in the correct manner. If these windows show two icons matching the symbol for the lock you are attempting to open, then you successfully solved the puzzle and may move onto the next room, reading aloud the relevant page in the booklet.

If players get stuck, they can look up hints online. The hints are given in multiple steps so that you are first given general ideas to work with and finally work your way up to being given the full solution.

Review

Between the dollhouse itself, peeling things off the walls, and the objects that you interact with, The Cursed Dollhouse is a very tactile and immersive experience, which in turn gives it more of a flavor of a regular escape room.

There is a really nice range of puzzles included in the game, too. They never come across as repetitive, and some were pretty unique to the escape room in a box experience. Difficulty is highly subjective, but we did find this to be quite challenging (certainly the hardest that ThinkFun has yet released), and had to use a few hints. The hint system is really well designed, however, and we loved both how easy it was to select exactly which puzzle you’re working on and the way they doled out the information, and the puzzles never felt unfair.

The production value on the game is fabulous and the dollhouse itself is incredibly cool to have on your table and play around with. The story and theme are both spooky, and the components play into this nicely. We really enjoyed how much atmosphere they’ve managed to infuse into the game.

It can be a little difficult for all players to see inside the dollhouse at the same time due to space, and some puzzles require you to consult the house in order to come up with a solution. However, as each room typically has at least three puzzles you need to work on, you can minimize this issue when playing with more people by having different players working on different puzzles. This also makes it more likely that everyone will have something to do.

As an escape room game, The Cursed Dollhouse is obviously a game you’re only going to be playing through once. We were playing for around three hours, so there is a lot of game there. The rulebook does suggest that if you want to pause, you can do so between rooms. The house itself and the couple of pieces of furniture you have to assemble are also not too difficult to put together, and the instructions are quite clear, so setting up the dollhouse again is not a barrier to taking a break.

ThinkFun does provide tips for how to reset the game so that other people can play it, however it should be noted that you’ll have to stick certain items back on the walls of the dollhouse, and at least one component is destroyed (potentially more, depending on how you solve the puzzles). ThinkFun does provide printable replacements for any of these components, but depending on your printer or your knowledge of print-and-play, this can be problematic for some players.

The Cursed Dollhouse is both a treat to the eye and a fantastic experience. If you’re looking for a challenge or a spooky Halloween game night, with a game that feels significantly different from other escape room games on the market, you should check this one out.

Pros: Range and originality of puzzles, thematic and atmospheric, tactile experience, puzzles can be worked on simultaneously

Cons: At max player count it can be difficult for everyone to examine the dollhouse, some components get destroyed during gameplay, long play time

Giveaway

Enter below to win a copy of The Cursed Dollhouse just in time for Halloween! One lucky winner will receive a free copy (U.S. only, 18+). We would like to thank ThinkFun for sponsoring this giveaway.

The Cursed Dollhouse: Halloween Escape Game Giveaway

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.