It’s Valentine’s Day. You head down to the restaurant a little early for date night. Upon entering the building, however, the door closes and locks behind you. You quickly discover that you’re trapped inside! Can you (and any friends you’ve chosen to bring along) piece together the clues, solve the riddles, and gather enough information to make your escape?

The Cupid Crisis is the fourth installment in the Holiday Hijinks series from Grand Gamers Guild. This 18-card game is rated 3 out of 3 for difficulty and takes about an hour to play (it took us 63 minutes). For those that have never played any of the Holiday Hijinks series, each one is an escape room-style game made up of riddles, trivia, logic puzzles, and the like that guide players card by card to their eventual liberation from their predicament with the assistance of an app. Out of all the puzzles Jonathan Chaffer designed for this game, two particularly stumped us and ate up quite a bit of our time as we tried to avoid using hints. Fortunately, The Cupid Crisis typically provided more than one riddle at a time so we could multi-task without getting frustrated if we got stuck for too long. Puzzles don’t need to be solved in order, but they do all eventually need to be solved to keep the story progressing and to reach the finale, of course!

There is no actual setup involved with the game other than setting the small deck of cards on the table and being within reach of whatever method players choose for accessing the online app. It is important not to look at the cards ahead of time and to have a pen and some paper nearby for note-taking, doodling, and other problem-solving needs. The app itself is pretty self-explanatory, but a little bland. In addition to the simple text field for inputting and checking answers, there is a section full of hints and answers, a way to go back through what you’ve done so far, and an incredibly helpful section filled with extra information that may be useful when deciphering certain clues.

Out of all of the ones we have played (admittedly not all of them), The Cupid Crisis and The Kringle Caper are the most thematic and best at keeping the players invested in the story. Others have had great puzzles, but seemed to struggle to tell the tale. While easily solo-able, we feel the game shines best at 2-4 players both mechanically and thematically – it is Valentine’s Day, after all. As this is the first one in the series that we have purchased a physical copy of instead of opting for the print-and-play, we were able to do a lot more with it. For example, the small box made it perfect for me to slip inside a box of candy and surprise my partner with it on date night! We greatly enjoyed this activity as a couple and recommend it as a great entry point to those that are new to the series, but still like a challenge.

All photos used in this review were taken and edited by Krista.