Base price: $15.
1 – 6 players.
Play time: 1 – 3 hours.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 1 

Full disclosure: A review copy of Return of Doctor Esker’s Notebook was provided by Plankton Games.

Alright, the next few weeks are going to be pretty intense on the personal and work fronts, so the reviews are scaling back a bit to compensate. Gonna be how it’s gotta be, I suppose. That’s all well and good, but what games will we get to is anyone’s guess. Trying to go through a bunch of them before the end of June, if possible. Looks like many of them will be escape room and puzzle games, so lots to get excited about on that front! Next one up is a return to the venerable Doctor Esker’s Notebook franchise, the aptly-named Return of Doctor Esker’s Notebook! Let’s dive in.

In Return of Doctor Esker’s Notebook, players are once again given a bunch of puzzles from the recently-disappeared Doctor Esker. The same formula goes, too! Each puzzle is made of a few cards, and solving that puzzle will give you a combination of numbers which directs you to the next puzzle. That’s the standard for Esker’s puzzles, and you won’t see a major deviation on this front. Will you be able to crack the mystery of Doctor Esker’s Notebook a third time?

Overall: 7 / 10

Overall, I liked Return of Doctor Esker’s Notebook! It was interestingly a bit divisive within my play group, but that’s how the Esker games tend to be for us. I think there’s a bit of knowledge the game takes for granted, which ends up making some of the puzzles feel a bit inaccessible if you don’t remember that specific thing. Made my co-player feel not great, which isn’t the funnest outcome from a puzzle. Thankfully, our total puzzle overlap is pretty strong, so we got through them nonetheless. The strangest thing I’ll note is that there seemed to be a misprint or something on the final puzzle which made it difficult for us to solve. That and some ambiguous wording threw us off pretty significantly. Seems like as good a time as any to mention that Esker retains a pretty impressive nine-point hint system which does a pretty great job at helping you over any issues in the game, though, so while we were thrown off, we were still able to finish the game. I love that a lot of the newer escape room games have really robust hint systems. Esker even tracks how many hints are collectively used so you can pre-scope which puzzles are the hardest ones, which I enjoy.

On the positive side, Return had several puzzles that I liked quite a bit. They tend to be a bit on the mathier side, so getting a puzzle that was geography + Rebus-based was a nice diversion. Clever wordplay abounds, which is precisely my kind of puzzle type, and I always appreciate the portability (and relatively low price point) of these games. Reusability is also a feature, here, and the game encourages it! You can note how long it took you to beat the game and then pass it along to a friend. I appreciate that. Maybe I should start a reusable puzzle game library once I settle into the new place. Worth thinking about.

Regardless, the Esker series positions itself as a nice way to pass time or just hang out, and I think Return of Doctor Esker’s Notebook fits in nicely with that entire paradigm! Solid puzzles, short time commitment, reusable, and a robust hint system. Pretty much what I expect from every escape room / puzzle game I play lately (save for the time commitment; I have some reviews of longer-form escape room games coming soon). I’m excited to see how the fourth game in the series shapes up, though I hope that’s not the end of Esker. If you’re looking for a puzzle game that’s pretty easy to pick up or take with you, you enjoy a robust hint system, or you just want something with a relatively small footprint, you might enjoy Return of Doctor Esker’s Notebook! We had fun with it.

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