When I was contacted by Of Dice and Men to ask if I’d like to participate in their ‘traveling Unlock’ series (in which a single copy of Unlock! Squeek and Sausage travelled around the world) I said yes so darn fast.

90s Calvin grew up on three kinds of video games: long form RPGs like Fallout, visceral shooters like Doom, and, perhaps his favorite, point and click adventure games.

The Lucasarts line was by far the best. Unlike Sierra’s Quest line of games (which were charming and beautiful in their own right) you couldn’t die or become irreversibly stuck. You could still become stuck because you couldn’t figure out how to advance through the next puzzle, but eventually you’d go to school and find that one friend who had a walkthrough for the game on CD.

UNLOCK! by Space Cowboys is the first board game that’s evoked those halycon days. Although billed as an Escape Room style experience, Squeak and Sausage felt not too much like an escape room and everything like Sam and Max Hit the Road from 1993.

The quirky cel-shaded animation style and pixel-hunting each location for items fits right into the nostalgia brain, even down to the snarky ‘did you really think that would work??’ commentary from the game. (Yes, we actually did. Sorry.)

Unlock’s conceit is the combination of several clever mechanisms and some really cool puzzles, which tease out strands of logic, spatial reasoning, and sometimes just ‘oh screw it, let’s just try it and see what happens.’

For those who don’t like clowns, the good news is he doesn’t really appear much in the game itself.

In Squeek & Sausage, you’re trapped in the lair of the evil Professor Noside. For a mad genius, the good professor has a fairly shoddy sense of security and you must traverse the lair and stop his schemes for world domination.

I’m being intentionally vague for anti-spoiler purposes, because Unlock games are designed to be played once. Once you know all their secrets, it’s really difficult to break out again because the puzzles are well-designed enough that the solution makes you go ‘OHHHHHH’ and then remember it pretty much for ever.

I’m not sure how I feel about one and done board games, but I think Of Dice and Men had the right idea when they put this copy to work traveling the globe and allowing loads of people to experience the fun - and it is fun! Using an app to input things like security codes and be told move to the next room’ lends the game that classic video game feel. When you do solve a puzzle through use of sheer cunning you feel like the cleverest group of people in the world. Or maybe not. Because when you get stuck, it feels awful.

Anyone remember this?

When you get stuck because you can’t figure out the logical leap between B and C, or you overlooked an item 3 rooms back, or you fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the puzzle, it feels terrible. The app helpfully provides a hint system that you can use to keep going, but having to resort to it (and the subsequent feeling of ‘OH MY GOD THAT WAS SO OBVIOUS’) doesn’t feel great. Did I mention all this is under time pressure? You have 60 minutes to complete the game and some wrong answers will deduct time from your total. We played the whole adventure in 30 minutes but ended with a time of 57:53.

The oneshot nature of the game means that asking the app for solutions reduces the amount of joy and exploration you derive from it. I feel like it would have been a lot better with just the timer removed and maybe a ‘high score’ function put in - a minor, psychological tweak, but then what else is a game but a way to derive enjoyment from the quirks of human psychology?

LOOK JUST START AT -3 AND LET US GAIN POINTS INSTEAD OF DEDUCTING THEM. GAARGH.

(I do want to give special mention to one of the final puzzles in the game for being one of the most inventive pieces of design I’ve ever seen. You’ll know it when you play it.)

Do I recommend Unlock? Yes, if you’re able to get past the caveats. It’s a fantastically fun group experience, although playing in a well lit space and having good visual acuity is almost mandatory because of the sometimes small hidden items (which to the game’s credit the app has a mode to help with).

I don’t know whether the other titles in the series are like Squeek & Sausage but this installment has been enough to whet my appetite for more.

Calvin's Corner - Unlock! Squeek and Sausage

Calvin Wong

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