Base price: $30.
1 – 4 players.
Play time: 20 – 30 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 3 

Full disclosure: A review copy of The Key: Royal Star Casino Burglary was provided by HABA.

Alright, time to power through one more review and then I’m heading to PAX Unplugged. I like to think that I’ll write while I’m there, but that hasn’t been true for like, five years, in any circumstance, so I’m not holding my breath. There’s a chance that I’ll have a bit more time to write with my family, but even then, I’d be surprised if I took time over the holidays to write when I could just hang out with my folks. I do love reviewing, but I’m finding there are things that I’d rather do. Nothing to worry about! I’ll still be writing for a long time yet to come; I just take a bit of a break during the holidays. In the meantime, though, let’s see how this latest entry in The Key series is doing!

In The Key: Royal Star Casino Burglary, the casino has been robbed! The worst part is, it wasn’t just robbed once; it was robbed three distinct times in one night. Not the best vote of confidence for their security. That said, they did catch all three culprits, so they can’t be all bad. The problem is, the culprits did a pretty good job covering their tracks. Nobody knows which person cracked which safe at which time or what code they used to do it. That’s where you come in. If you’re new to The Key, you’re going to gather evidence and try to determine the facts so that you can come up with a passcode and see whether or not your deductions were correct. You’re not alone, though (unless you’re playing solo): everyone else is working as fast as you are! That said, it’s not about being the fastest; it’s about being the most efficient. Do you have what it takes to solve the mystery of this burgled casino?

Overall: 8.5 / 10

Overall, The Key: Royal Star Casino Burglary is one of my favorites in the series! It does a nice job iterating on other games’ formulas while providing some interesting challenges of its own. For instance, in order to figure out how someone cracked the code, you get to do a little tile-organization puzzle, where one of the tiles is given to you in the correct orientation and you have to figure out the other ones. It’s almost reminiscent of an EXIT game, except you have to do it in real time. You also have to figure out what time someone was on the floor with the safe, and all you get are the times they used the elevator and how many floors in each direction they traveled. You have to look at the elevator diagram and figure out what route they must have taken to arrive when they did, and it’s super fun to have to calculate it and figure it out!

Honestly, there’s a lot of innovation in this one, but sometimes it causes the logical deduction to stretch your imagination a bit. There’s never anything that requires you to guess, but the wording may be challenging for some players. For instance, you might be told that two culprits interacted; this means you need to look at their calendars and figure out when one would have walked through a location where the other one was on their way to their next event. That’s not immediately clear in the game, so there’s some potential for messing that up. Once you get it, though, that’s another fun logical deduction tool in a super-fun and quick game.

I think even though the elevator puzzle vexes me occasionally, Royal Star Casino Burglary has some of my favorite puzzles and puzzle types in the series! I was kind of worried that Sing was going to tire out after three solid family deduction games, but there’s a lot of depth to plumb here, clearly. I’m excited about the ride, and can’t wait to see where the series goes next. If you’re a fan of The Key, you’ve always wanted to crash an Ocean’s Eleven plot, or you just like solving puzzles, I’d definitely recommend checking out The Key: Royal Star Casino Burglary! I’ve had a blast with it.

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