Alarm 22 Board Games: Escape from Alcatraz

We visited Alcatraz and first bought this game at their gift shop. We played it once and found it so fun that we bought it for both of our families!The board is accurately scaled to represent Alcatraz. You get to choose your prisoner from a list of criminals who did time at Alcatraz and attempted escape. The escape routes all involve tools and routes that the prisoners attempted - which makes it a learning adventure! The game requires planning, patience, and a little bit of luck.I highly recommend this game for history enthusiasts and anyone who enjoys a tactful board game. Beware, it is slightly addictive and you'll find yourself attempting escape again and again!

The game mechanics are sound, and it is a fun game. Excellent quality. Love the historical characters!

Looks like a fun game. Have not opened it. I bought it as a gift for someone.

Fun idea for a game, but the instructions are a bit difficult to understand.

So, I found this game out of the blue right after I did a tour of Alcatraz prison; it was in a corner of a small store on Pier 39. I thought, cool I just went through the tour and was already hyped to buy something of Alcatraz history, why not a board game.The game is brand new for 2018 produced by Alarm 22. The game is somewhat of a recreation of all the different escapes from Alcatraz prison during its operation period of 1934 to 1963, when it closed. It covers all the famous escapes and any of these escapes are what players are trying to accomplish to win the game.The game is 2-4 players “no solo rules but I may come up with something” and plays in about 60 to 90 minutes. It consists of a huge “really BIG” game board 25”x17”. There are many undersized cards “PLANNING, ESCAPE, GUARD, WARDEN, MODEL PRISONER”, four colored game pieces, four inmate card clips, six colored d6 dice, plastic “credit card” type inmate cards, a rules pamphlet and four escape route charts with all this coming in a standard sized game box.This is not a CO-OP game and each player is out to win the game on their own and it’s not cut-throat or take-that style of game play. You do have the ability to take cards from other players or fight them when you land on their space but it’s very minimal and is based on die rolls or card functions.First off, the rules are atrocious! I can’t say this enough but the rules made the game so confusing that when we started playing we didn’t have a clue what we were doing until more than half way through the game. The rules omit or don’t explain a lot of what is necessary to play the game successfully. There is a lot of ambiguity and vague references. They wrote the rules in a linear fashion with bullet like text style, which doesn’t give you a good idea of what you are doing or what you should be doing during play! Sorry but the rules just plain suck, plus there were reference errors on the escape sheet that correlate to the wrong escape routes on the game board and this to me was a huge error in editing and proof reading. One frustrating rule we could find and had to just assume was when you are on your final escape route, do you discard a card once you land on a location space to see if you have that type of card? Seem like you would but there is no reference in the rules that specifically states this! Ugh!Basically, in a nut shell there are two functional parts to the game; an inmate processing function and the main game. To me you could really toss out the processing part of the game because all it did was decide who gets to pick their inmate card and get the model prisoner card as opposed to randomly getting an inmate card. It was neat and fun but it was time consuming, not realistic with prisoners fighting during processing or added no historical flavor to the game or its overall game play. You literally could have rolled the die and the highest roll gets to pick their inmate card, which is what we started to do in the last two games. Done! As it is, you play a small 15 to 20-minute pre-game process to decide the inmate cards. NOTE: The inmate cards are fabulous! There are many varieties of inmate cards made of hard plastic and look cool. Very sturdy and of high quality! Kudos for these components!After the players get their inmate cards the real game begins. Each player moves his player piece around a designated path throughout the island and within specific locations such as the rec yard, cell block, model fabrication, etc.… Each turn you will move your player pieces around this long path using 2d6 for movement, trying to land on ESCAPE and PLANNING spaces to get these cards to help with your eventual escape. Along the way you will land on draw GUARD card spaces that can help or hinder your progress. You can only hold a number of these Escape and Planning card during play and must discard any cards above the minimum card counts for your hand which was 5 for a 3-player game. As you gain Escape and Planning cards you will be deciding on which escape path you will be taking to get off the island.This is where the Escape Route Chart comes in. This chart shows three types of escape routes: Escape at Night, Daytime Escape or Grounds Escape. Each of these three escape routes take place in the different areas of the island and to start that escape route your player piece must be in the area to begin the escape.So how do you escape you might ask! Well, each of the Planning and Escape cards has items or locations on them. These items or locations are what you will use to help you pass through the sections/locations of the escape route while trying that specific escape path. So, for example: you might try Escape path 13 of the Escape at Night type. Route 13 begins from the Main Cell block and winds around the cell block house, down through search lights and alarms and then down to the water line and into the water. There are 34 spaces that must be moved through using a single d6 die to make your escape and spread out within these spaces are specific location that you MUST have the cards to pass through without being detected. If you move into a space that calls for a specific Planning or Escape card, such as “Search Lights” and you don’t have the card, you are captured and placed in solitaire confinement. You love a turn and must discard all your card and start over from the beginning in the main cell block house. If you have the card you pass through that path section/location freely and discard that that card I think “because it is never explained in the rules and we just assumed you discard it, WTH!” While moving on the escape path you only roll a single d6 and sometimes you have multiple area of a specific location types such as “no count, fence, or alarm” and although you can collect two of some of these types of cards, there are not duplicates of all the locations meaning you hit the spot once, discard the location card and then roll a 1 which would cause you to still hit the same location type and without the card you are caught! Crap! Start all over again. One thing that would have been nice is to have a couple of +1 or +2 to the die roll cards. This way if you only had one of the locations card you could use a +1 to the dice roll cards to save your butt and pass the sections; otherwise you are caught and must start all over again! Major Frustration of the game!During game play, you will be collecting cards to help you decide which escape route would be best to try and sometimes you can collect a warden card or steal the model prisoner card which can be used to avoid solitaire confinement, as a wildcard for a planning card. etc. Also, some of the inmate cards have tools that can be used during the escape to help you get past certain locations along the escape path so some inmates are better than others.If you either roll very lucky or have the correct planning and escape cards to help you avoid the specific location along the escape path you will make it to the end of the escape route and to freedom; winning the game.Pros: At the price of $29 or so the game component quality is pretty good although not a lot of them. The plastic inmate cards are a major bonus and the game cards are nice but could have been linen quality for longer wear. The graphics are simple and ok with a pencil style colored game board being of good quality but with armature art. I love the layout of the game track on the game board within the island topography; very cool and makes sense. The box is study and of high quality. The game play is simple and straight forward once you figure out what you are supposed to do, which is rather hard with the current rules. There is a realistic feel to the game play as you progress with trying to work out the best escape plan, getting the correct cards to help make that escape possible and try to mitigate any problems that may arise during the escape yet knowing it will never be 100% guaranteed success without the possibility of failure. If you fail you still get to play and try a different route without being knocked out of the game. You have planning but little strategy since you can’t trade with players and the only interaction with other players is bumping them forward if you land on them or taking the warden or model prisoner card from them. Otherwise you are on your own during game play.Cons: The rules suck and I can’t explain it any better than that! They make the game hard to understand and play and when they tell you there are tutorial videos to watch, you can’t find any because they aren't ready yet! Bad planning! The game board is huge and you need a lot of table space. If four people are playing you will need to move other players pieces because it is very hard to reach to the other side of the game board. You are basically drawing card and discarding card you don’t need, waiting to get the right cards to take the best path to escape and forced to discard cards once you pass the hand limits. If you lucky enough to get the right cards you are in good shape but if you can’t get the cards you need you are either waiting a long time to get them or taking a huge risk and just trying to make an escape, which can seem real and risky but if you fail it sucks having to lose all your card and start all over again from scratch. Realistic but can get frustrating fast! The lack of a TRADING PHASE for Planning or Escape cards with other inmates is frustrating because trading and bartering was natural in prison to get what you needed. To not have it in the game is wrong and would have been a simple extra phase of the turn. During the TRADE phase, everyone gets a chance to request a single card type and if two players have the cards that each other needs, they would be able to trade. Simple! I understand that you don’t know what cards other players hold in their hands but during the trade phase all the player announce one card they need and if two players like the trade they can do it. I’ll probably create a house rule for this just to see how it adds to the game.Another negative thing is the Guard cards during the final escape. If you land on a guard card space there is a 50/50 chance of being caught! You will be caught if the Guard Card is EVEN numbered. If odd you are safe. It is said as a TIP to avoid this just pass your turn up until someone gets a guard card and the next card will be odd! WHAT? So, you must sit there doing nothing and wait till an odd Guard card shows up or just roll the die and hope you don’t land on the Guard space! This doesn’t seem realistic to me that you could be sitting there turn after turn while others gain more cards and get closer to escaping while you either wait or risk losing it all on a die roll! There should have been more cards available to mitigate this possibility of instant loss! This was hit many times and caused a lot of frustration with the players! Not good! Also, the game can be rather long with a four-player game being long due to all the possibilities of instantly being caught while trying to escape. A lot of our games went a long time because of everyone constantly getting caught near the end of their escape route. There are spaces where you can hit a location three times and since you can only get a max of two of these locations cards “if you’re lucky” a bad roll of 1, 1, and 1 will get you caught, which happened many times. We played 4 games and each was over 2 hours easy so they need to rework the game time numbers to be more realistic. Granted we were new at the game but by the fourth game we had it down and it was still over 2 hours and we bypassed the processing part of the game. The odd shaped cards make it hard to find card sleeves so if you like to sleeve your cards this may upset you!Overall: Even with some of the cons I still liked this game! It had the feel of being a prisoner trying to figure out the best way to plan an escape and get off the island. I really want some house rules to be able to work in trading cards but will need to figure this one out. I think this would help speed up the game play. It is a long-playing game but you are having fun playing so it doesn’t seem bad at the time. You can get frustrated when you’re caught but it feels real because escapes are not always perfect or guaranteed, things happen and you can get caught at any moment. Pretty cool! I would’ve liked to have seen some combo cards or card that could be played together to help with your escape or even +1 or +2 to die roll card but the cards in the game are flavored and realistic. It’s a fun game with very little strategy but has a nice buildup of tension before and during the actual escape. I see people buying this game if they are Alcatraz fans or junkies and really love board gaming. It is authentic feeling to a degree and so far, is one of the better Alcatraz games out there since there aren’t too many of them. I hope they come out with an expansion that fixes the rules, adds more functions or phases to play such as trading, gives possible solo rules and creates more cards that have combos, +# to die roll cards, etc.… Give it a go if you really like these types of games and it will help a small company make more of these types of games.

Doing time, as I would imagine is long and tedious. That being said, this game can be too. While fun, the game took awhile to understand completely and some of the rules are still a little vague. But still I stress this game IS fun, especially if you have a group of friends who enjoy these types of long games.I picked the game up at the retailer by Alcatraz Island itself, I recently created my own game and am always looking to support other small games. When I got home I cracked it open and started reading the rules.The rules that come with the game (I know there are more in depth ones on the website, but I'm reviewing what came WITH the game) , for the most part, explain how to play, and if you don't look too far into mechanics you could play based off of what you are given. However, there are two things in the rule book that caused some dispute cause of the vagueness. Fighting was the first. Upon first glance it seems the winner moves forward one and the loser moves back one, but then you get to the Double Fight Corner. The rules here state that "the role of the FIGHT DIE is doubled moving forward or backwards. This brought up the question "so do we move forward and backwards the number we rolled that won or loss for a regular fight and double that for a double fight" we decided to continue with the one forward one back (and double that for double fight) but we were still a little confused. I went online after we played and could not find a place on the site that cleared this up.Second were the tools prisioners are givin on certain cards. The rules tell you "try to pick an ALCATRAZ INMATE card with a tool. These inmates mad real escapes. While one player thought this was just a nod to the actual escapes, another thought this meant they would always have that tool for the escape and would not have to have that card. We settled on the latter, and i read online afterwards that this was the case, but the rules that come with the game do not state this.Also just a personal note, possibly adding an optional play rule in where doubles do let you go again but only so many time or you go to solitary for "running" (kind of like monopoly) would be a cute little way to speed up the game for younger players who want to play the whole game, but do still have a shorter attention span.Having mad/currently makeing a game myslef, i know how hard it can be to make a fool proof set of rules, especially on a first print, and so I hope that this review helps the team improve some of the stuff that is lacking in an otherwise really good game.Rules out of the way I want to talk about the design and art.Wow. The board is beautiful, and much bigger than i expected based on the size of the box. The attention to detail is amazing, which isnt hard to believe after I latter foudn out that this was made by the same guy that made the model of the island that is on display (that thing is awesome by the way). Jimbo, ya did a good job.The graphic design and illistration for the cards are very well done, the objects are simple and a little cartoonish but they get the point across and are fun and the layout of the escape planning and gaurd cards make it easy to understand when how and where to use them.The Inmate cards are absolutly AMAZING. You can tell that there was an immense level of care, work, attention to detail and passion that went into making these. The hard credit card like material its printed on guarantee that these will last for a lonnnnng time. The game player peices are cute and the matching colored dice are a nice touch.All in all this is a game that you can tell was lovingly crafted. It's beautiful and fun, even with its flaws that are here and there. I had a fun time playing it, and look forward to seeing this game grow and the team get recognition they deserve!

I received this game as a gift. Took me awhile to play, but my next dinner party was a hit! If your over 16 and want to add a new game to the rotation this ones for you. You can shoot the moon or you can do the time. It's up to you. Guaranteed bragging rights. Good times.