Doomensions: Pop-Up Manor Mystery was on on Kickstarter back in October 2022, and delivered to me in mid November 2023.

This is essentially a cooperative Escape Room game for 1-4 players with 4 chapters with 4 puzzles per chapter (5 chapters if you count the finale). Players work together to solve puzzles cooperatively in this Mystery Manor world.

The back of the box hints at what this world is: it’s a pop-up game (yes, pop-up) in an ancient manor. The back of the box doesn’t really do it justice: it’s pretty cool looking. I was very excited to get this to the table!

This review has a lot of pictures, but it shouldn’t have any real spoilers unless you look too closely at the pictures.

Preamble

A few months before my game arrived, I got this letter in the mail from the Department of Archeology and Historic Preservation. See above.  I almost threw it away, because it looked like some kind of phising or spam letter.   Something in my mind said “Wait”, and I ended up opening it up.

It turns out, as part of the Kickstarter, I got a “herald letter” before the game came to me!   There are some puzzles in the letter (see above), and some back-story to get me excited for the game!  I have to say, this was pretty cool: I’ve never had a Kickstarter do this before.   This really did get me pretty excited for the game.

Unboxing

So, this game is a weird size. It’s long and thin and pretty wide. Also note I got another letter with the Kickstarter (which I can’t open until I’m done).

The Coke can gives you a sense of how big and long this box is!

The rulebook is long and thin, like the box.

It comes with a folder of clues (don’t open this yet!)

There are 4 chapters to the game: each subtab of the folder is for that section of the game. See above.

The version of the game I got comes with a really nice and big magnifying glass! To see how big it is, I place it next to a Can of Coke! It’s quite nice and weildy.

A very nice bag comes with a notebook (for clues) and a Hint Book: since this is an Escape Room game, it’s possible you will get confused. The Hint Book is to help you when you get stuck. I also got a little flashlight.

The notebook is also from the Department of Archeology. Inside …

.. are a list of Kickstarter backers. Hey! There I am!

But the most important thing is the mansion! It’s a GIANT pop-up book held together with some knots on the edges!! We’ll see what this looks like opened-up later on … it’s pretty cool!

The production on this game is through the roof! Everything in this version of the game is just fantastic!  And wait until you see the pop-up book opened!!!

Rulebook

This rulebook wasn’t great.

Although the rulebook has a very big font and is very readable, it gets a C- on The Chair Test because it’s not really usable on the chair next to me. It’s too big! It really doesn’t fit on the chair and its pages flop over. The font choice and size keep this from failing, but I really couldn’t use this. This really needed a better form factor.

I also don’t feel like the rulebook did a good job preparing me for the game (see Solo Game below). The rulebook had a lot of text: it felt wordy. I have played a lot of Escape Room games, but I didn’t feel like I was prepared for this game.

I don’t know. I wish the rulebook had been a lot better: it might have made my first experience better. It needed a few more pictures?

Game Session 0: Solo Game

So, you can play this solo: see the box above. I both recommend it and don’t recommend playing this solo. What do I mean by this?

I recommend playing through the first puzzle or two in the game to get acquainted with how this world works. This a little different from most Escape Room game because of the world you inhabit. It’s good to get a sense of everything before exposing your friends to this.

My first mistake in playing the game was “only” opening the book to one section of the mansion. Since the game is 4 chapters long, it makes sense that you only see 1 of 4 sections at a time? Right? See above as I open just the landing area.

Nope nope nope nope nope! You have to open the entire mansion up and look at all rooms! I didn’t realize this until I made no progress solving the puzzle and looked at the Hint Book.

The Hint Book for the first puzzle made it clear: you had to open the whole mansion up! This was an honest mistake, but I wasted more time than I’d care to admit. By the time I got to that point, I was sort of done as the solo player. I figured out how the mansion works, how the clue wheel works, and how the game basically flows. But I really wanted more brains to help me through this.

I think this is one of those games that more brains make it easier to solve: someone else may see something you miss. If you miss something, this game just feels like you are a dead end. The Hint Book is very good, but still, there are only 4 puzzles per chapter, and you want to get your money’s worth.

Play it just a little way solo to learn how the game works and the puzzles work (all puzzles have a 3 digit number for the solution) and then stop: play with your friends. This was so much more fun with my friends.

Game Session 1: A 3-Player Game

In game session 1, we played a 3-player game. It was absolutely more fun to play with 3 players: Andrew would see something nobody else would see, Teresa would then take it from there, or I would offer some insight. I really think this game is better at multiple players.

We ended up playing 2 sessions in one night: it was about 90 minutes per session. We got more tired in the second session, so I can see only playing 1 session per night. Weirdly, I feel like the game’s assesssment of length seemed too long (a rare thing). It seems to imply each session is about 2 to 2.5 hours: we seemed to do a little better.

The main takeaway from our gameplay: this was fun, but it would have been slightly better at 4 people! There are 4 sections of the house, and it’s easier to divide the work into the different sessions! Still, it worked well at 3.

Session 2: A 4-Player Game

Our next session of this game was 4-Players!  And boy what a difference that made! The workload seemed lessened (as each player took responsibility for a section of the house), and more brains made the game more fun!  Right when someone felt stuck, another person might take charge!

It was clear that 2 sessions, at about 1.5 hours each (for a total of 3 hours), was about the right amount of time.  Although we made it to the finale, we were all too tired to finish … 

But more brains made a big difference: if someone felt a little tired, there were 3 people to take their place! In general, we had a great time shifting from puzzle to puzzle, with different subsets of people working on the puzzles concurrently.

Finale: A 5-Player Game!

In the Finale, Sara brought over her sister and we played 5 players!  It seemed to go over just fine with 5-Players: it may get a little crowded, but I think it depends on the makeup of your group.  We didn’t have any problems having a 5th player in our final run.

We took about 2 hours to solve the finale!  It was pretty fun and relatively climactic!  Our only complaint was the first puzzle in the finale had a wonky solution that we all said “ya, that wasn’t great”.  But everything else was fun! It felt like we had a very satisfying ending an investigation into this mystery house!

Components

These might be the best components of any game I played this year. The magnifying class, the pop-up book, the puzzle wheel, were all just fantastic.

And how can you not be blown away by the Pop-Up Book? Once you see it on the table, it’s fantastic!

This game should probably win Best Components of the year.

Suggestions

Play this at 4 players: it felt like the best player count and offered the best experience. Over the course of four week, we played it at 1, 3, 4 and 5 Players. A 4-Player game was probably the best.

Play the first puzzle or two (puzzle A & maybe puzzle B) as a solo player to get a sense of how the game works, but then don’t ever play it solo again! By biting the bullet and figuring how the game flowed, it made it so much easier to teach my friends.

We ended up taking a piece of clear acetate from the Star Trek Pathways, and it really helped us do the puzzles!! We could trace a lot of the puzzles and both keep the components pristine, but also embracing the puzzles. We used this same clear acetate when we played Suspects a few weeks ago (see our review here).

Put the pop-up book on the edge of the table with nothing else in front of it: it makes it easier to circle and deftly look at the rooms. Generally, we put the chairs on the far side of the table so we could do puzzles there, but kept the chairs away from the manor side.

This goes without saying, but make you open up the entire pop-up book!  Don’t be me and only open “1 section”: that’s not right!

Get 2 oversized binder clips.  Why?

Although the ribbons are supposed to be tied to keep the book open and taut, it worked much better to have 2 binder clips to hold the book open: see above.

Also, make sure you are well-rested to play.  There’s a lot of mental and physical activity as we played.  I might suggest playing over 3 sessions; chapters 1 and 2, chapters 3 and 4, and the finale as we did.

Complaints

The puzzles are all independent, but they are labelled A,B,C,D, etc which implies they MUST be done in order. Nope! Our experience was the each puzzle was an independent puzzle. It might have been more fun to have be able to work on some of the puzzles concurrently: when I got stuck, I could have moved forward on a different puzzle and still felt involved. Sometimes, a puzzle just didn’t speak to you, and you feel useless. It wasn’t until we made it most of the way though the game that we realized “We could have worked on these independently!!” (at least per chapter). ABCD labels implies ordering. I wish they would have used labels that don’t imply order (obviously numbers wouldn’t have worked either): maybe some of the arcane symbols from the game?

This is NOT a kid’s game! That font and that cover picture and that pop-up book maight make you think this is for kids … no no no no no. First of all, the subject matter can be a little disturbing: there’s death, blood splatters, and some scary situations! Second, the complexity of the puzzles and amount of detail needed really wouldn’t work with kids. Maybe, maybe they could help play, but our experience was that we needed every brain with no distractions to really engage this game.

One last complaint, the flashlight that came with the game died within 2 sessions. Make sure you have multiple flashlights: they really do help.

Comparison

One of my favorite escape room experiences of all time was playing Escape The Room: The Cursed Dollhouse!  See our review here!   Although the components aren’t nearly as good as Doomensions, they did definitely awe us when we played this 3 years ago!  

The best part of the game was that each room had numerous puzzles, and we could concurrently work those puzzles!  We got to experience every single subset of 4 people solving the puzzles!  That really set a high bar for cooperation!  I think that’s why I complained that the puzzles were presented so linearly in Doomensions!  My experience with The Cursed Dollhouse really exposed how great that  concurrent mechanism can work.

From a components perspective, The Cursed Dollhouse can’t hold a candle to Doomensions.  But I think I enjoyed the puzzles a little more in The Cursed Dollhouse: they were all just a little different.  The puzzles in Doomensions “always” had to be a 3-digit number … which felt a bit tedious after a while.

Conclusion

This game is an amazing experience with amazing components, but it does require a a commitment to get through the whole thing. If you do decide you want a similar but more contained experience, The Cursed Dollhouse might be the better choice. But if you want to embrace a full multi-session escape room game in a scary universe, Doomensions: Pop-Up Mystery Manor is a great choice! To be clear, this was a fantastic experience with my friends! I strongly recommend checking out the Recommendations section if you do decide to play the game: those recommendations can really make or break this game.

After a frustrating start, this ended up being a pretty great game: This is probably an 8.5/10 for the overall experience! Amazing components! Just be aware: it’s probably not for young kids.