Two of us spent six hours escaping the Ghost Apartment at Night

Introduction

Hi, I’m kittchy.

My partner and I played SCRAP’s Escape from the Ghost Apartment at Night (Yoru no Yurei Apartment kara no Dasshutsu). We started on the night of August 22 and finished a little after noon the next day. It’s a boxed game that costs 3,980 yen. The official play time is 90 to 150 minutes for one player, and it took the two of us six hours.

Up front: SCRAP forbids publishing the game’s contents without permission, and the game is most fun if you open the box knowing nothing. So this article contains none of the puzzles or answers. All I can write about is what happened while we played and what I thought.

I kept wondering what was in the box

What you get is a cube-shaped box and an answer sheet. That’s it.

Between buying it and starting, I kept wondering what was inside. Shaking it told me nothing, and neither did the description.

So at 9 p.m. the two of us opened the box.

The tricks keep coming

This is what stayed with me most. I was surprised the whole time we were opening it up.

You cut the box, move things, find what’s hidden, and sometimes solve things with your phone. I can’t say more without spoiling it, but the feeling of “solve one and here comes the next” never broke until the very end.

At one point I said this out loud.

What! We use that? We’re allowed to use that? I never thought of that!

It was the moment I realized something I hadn’t thought of as a puzzle tool could be used directly in the answer. What got me wasn’t that I hadn’t thought of it, but that such a use was allowed at all.

Beyond that I kept saying “the detail on this is insane!” Before opening it, I never imagined the box itself would keep changing shape.

We started at 9 p.m. and finished the next day

Here’s how it went.

• Day 1: started at 9 p.m., stopped at 1 a.m., just short of the last puzzle
• Day 2: 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., and we finished

Six hours in total, more than double the expected 90 to 150 minutes. We also used hints on two puzzles.

That said, we weren’t stuck and stalled. The difficulty was just right: not too hard, but not easy either. I think the extra time came from talking things through as a pair.

Quitting at 1 a.m., sleeping, and picking it up again the next afternoon: being able to stop like that is a strength of the boxed format. With the real escape games you go to at a venue, you have to finish within the time limit. We could go at our own pace, or rather at the pace of our own sleepiness.

It says “ghost,” but it’s not scary

The title has “ghost” in it, and we played at night, so you might imagine that kind of game. But the ghosts that show up are cute, and there wasn’t a single scary moment. It’s fine even if you don’t like horror.

That matters when you play as a pair. If we’d been scared at 1 a.m., there might not have been a Day 2.

Closing

A 3,980-yen box and some paper gave the two of us six hours of fun. The tricks keep coming, so it felt less like we solved it and more like we saw it through to the end.

I’d recommend it for couples to play together. It’s designed for one player, but with two you can talk things over and save the rest for the next day. It’s a good fit for a day when you can’t decide what to do at home together.

Here’s the official site. 【公式】夜の幽霊アパートからの脱出夜の幽霊アパートからの脱出の公式サイト。衝撃のギミックが手元の「アパート」で次々と巻き起こる、驚愕の謎解き体験。 【公式】夜の幽霊アパートからの脱出

Next we’re playing Escape from Two Communication Bases (Aru 2tsu no Tsushin Kichi kara no Dasshutsu). The two players are in different places and each solves their own kit while connected on a video call. This time we were peering into one box in the same room, so it’s the exact opposite. I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes. リアル脱出ゲーム | 体験型謎解きエンターテインメント realdgame.jp

See you.