Original price was: £32.00.£21.50Current price is: £21.50.
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Buckle up to solve the trickiest case yet in the Key series and help figure out a spectacular prison break challenge. In the newest installment, The Key: Escape from Strong Wall Prison, three well-known criminals from previous The Key cases are on the run again! How could this be possible? Investigators are searching high and low and racking their brains.
This case will truly get heads spinning as you rely on more than just intuition. Each option will need to be investigated as clues about escape routes, laundry carts, hiding places, and gang affiliations are cleverly combined. On the game cards, even the tiniest changes to the piles of laundry must be examined and the navigation route must be followed on the map. In the end, all the information is worth nothing without the gangs’ contacts. But who is in which gang and who is lying when and about whom?
The correct number code or key puts the three dangerous gang bosses back behind bars. Clever mystery fans can be sure that they’ll successfully outsmart the culprits using skill, tactics, and a good nose for clues.
| Weight | 0.85 kg |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 21 × 26.5 × 4.8 cm |
Modern Games
Modern Games
Modern Games
Modern Games
Modern Games
Modern Games
Modern Games
Modern Games
In stock
Anni Vu –
Fun game
Fun game and easy to learn, pulled it out during a recent game night and my wife and kids liked it. Nice artwork, really simple to follow.
MissPippiReviews –
Review: HABA The Key: Escape from Strongwall Prison Investigative Crime Game
This investigation game was fun and aggravating at the same time! You gather clues to understand the crime to get the code number and then decode the code to solve the game. There are 9 games within the game to play! You can play this solo or against one an another. We played it as a cooperative which was fun! We didn’t win because our code wasn’t even on the answer board which was hilarious. We’ll just have to try it again sometimes! This is an excellent brain work game.
Peter M –
Fun game
This is a great game. There’s a lot to it and it takes some time to learn. It is worth it though. There are plenty of things to keep each game fresh. It’s been a lot of fun. Highly recommend.
T C Milton –
Quite Involved Game That Can Be Played a Limited Number of Times
The craftsmanship on this game is great; it has a good, hefty feel to it and the various pieces are attractive. Set up takes only a few minutes, straight out of the box the first time (including punching out the annoying little holes on the solution board). Learning the rules of the game, however, is going to take you an hour or so, so be prepared for that on the first go round. After that (you’ll only be able to play this game 9 times if any of the players has a good memory), play will go more quickly.This game is too complicated for any players that can’t reason fairly well, so it may not prove an “all the family” type of game. That was the reason for our 1-star deduction. Presents an interesting mystery to solve, for those that like clue-like deduction games. We have not played any of the other games in this series.
p –
Too much
I really didn’t like the game. 17 pages of instructions and very confusing. Can’t say I enjoyed the game. Played with my daughter. Will try again but it was pretty challenging.
E. Nick –
A favorite in our house
These “The Key” games from HABA have become some of my daughter’s favorites, and currently she’s particularly obsessed with this Strongwall Prison one. It’s supposed to be the hardest level, but in some ways it’s been easier to wrap our heads around than for instance the intermediate Royal Casino burglary installment.Which isn’t to say it’s not challenging. You’ve got to be fairly sharp to make sure you interpret all the clues correctly and arrive at the logical results, certainly compared with the starter level The Key games.The biggest difference between this and previous versions, though, is the additional puzzle surrounding the extra set of evolutions the final code goes through before you check it. These thematically are presented as getting the names of informants from gang members based on their gang affiliation (which must be determined separately from the details of the three main cases) and applying the associated permutations to the code. Design-wise, these extra transformations make it vital to get everything right, and in particular prevent working backwards from the final number to arrive at the proper solution.In a clever touch, all the inmates – the three gang bosses, as well as the six gang members – are all criminals featured in previous The Key games, in some cases evolved slightly by prison. If you work your way through some or all of those first, this makes for fun connections. It makes my daughter particularly interested in playing one of the predecessor games we haven’t gotten yet, just to find out more of these characters’ backstories.The three types of lab cards in this are all pretty good, with my least favorite being the “compares sets of two images for miniscule differences”, and the standout being the very original and engaging gimmick of needing to piece together the hijacked laundry truck used by an escapee, via a sequence of incomplete GPS-logged instructions, facilitated by a large map of the city, to arrive at the correct hideout used.The clues and logic based around the proximity of different inmates cells to each other, and the routes taken by the escaping gang members to reach the different breakout points, these are also well-done and satisfying.If you’ve enjoyed previous installations of The Key, I think it’s safe to say you’ll probably enjoy this one. It differentiates itself in interesting and satisfying ways, ups the difficulty but not unfairly, and keeps the compelling formula of its predecessors.
theresa –
Start with easy or medium difficulty level if you are new to HABA The Key; otherwise really fun!
I’ve played one other HABA The Key game of the medium difficulty level, and this advanced version has more elements, which makes it more challenging. The quest is to find which prisoner escaped through which door, using which laundry cart, to hide out at which location. Then, the other members of each criminal’s gang must also be identified. The correct answers lead to a code, which is modified a few times to make a final code to show whether you have won the game. (The player to solve it first with the least amount of investigative points wins.) There are lots of places to potentially go wrong and come up with a slightly wrong (or completely wrong) key code.I recommend that those new to HABA The Key start with an easy or medium difficulty level, as there are a lot of details to jump into all at once with this one. Otherwise, I really enjoyed playing this with my teenagers. The map puzzles in this one were particularly fun for me. There are also logic/deduction type clues, and careful observation clues. There are nine colored keys each representing a game variant, so you can play at least nine games (and potentially replay them if you are like me and don’t memorize the exact solutions).
comp_g33k –
A fun and challenging escape room in a box!
We love escape rooms and have done over 10 escape rooms in a box and the HABA ones are generally very well made with some creative puzzles. As usual, don’t expect the box to take the entire time to finish but this one was well done. We started with the hardest mode but could have easily been played in different difficulty levels for younger or less experienced players which is something not all boxes offer. We got caught up a few times with the code order but nothing that was so frustrating we wanted to quit.
R F –
Good game, but challenging and thorough
This is not a easy pick up and play game, but it can be really fun, and quite educational. Our son is really getting into this genre of games, and has enjoyed other HABA games. Escape from Strongwall Prison is probably not the best intro to the series, because its a touch harder than the others we’ve played. It is fun though, and like usual, the production quality on this is really good. Lots of hours of fun for a good price, if you like investigative/deductive games.
Degenerate –
Entertainment for houseguests
We tend to play board games when we have houseguests. This is a fine addition to our games collection. Not the longest game we own but fun nonetheless.I won’t spoil the game at all in this review but if you like what you see already you’ll probably enjoy.