Base price: $15.
1 – 4 players.
Play time: 45 – 90 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 1

Full disclosure: A review copy of EXIT: The Venice Conspiracy was provided by KOSMOS.

Been a while since we’ve reviewed an EXIT game around here, eh? Worry not; there are more in the pipeline. EXIT Catan is happening. We’re all very excited. My long-time EXIT collaborator and I living in different states has not deterred us; now we just have two copies and play together on video chat. It’s not the most inefficient thing I’ve done, but it’s certainly a good time. It’s just, when you’ve played every EXIT game on the market with the same person, playing one with anyone else feels weird. But I digress. Next up on the docket is EXIT: The Venice Conspiracy!

In EXIT: The Venice Conspiracy, you think today is going to be just like any other day. Thankfully, it’s not! You’ve been promoted to doing field work and solving field crimes, which in Venice are also usually water crimes. Hydrocrime. They should call it the Hydrocrimes Division, but for some reason both unknown to me and outside of the scope of this review, they do not. Maybe that’s the real Hydrocrime. But you’ve gotten word that some evildoers are planning to … poison an area? For disaster tourism? Maybe I’m not on social media enough anymore, but if anyone’s going to pose a threat that deeply nonsensical, you have to stop them! So figure out riddles, solve puzzles, and decode the mystery and put an end to this conspiracy before it’s too late! Can you save Venice?

Overall: 6 / 10

Well, this had to happen sooner or later. I thought EXIT: The Venice Conspiracy was fine. Don’t regret playing it in the slightest, but there were some cool things and some things that just didn’t land for me, unfortunately. I’m planning to get into it, yes, but let’s bring in some highlights first. I think that The Venice Conspiracy felt very conceptual, which was cool! There’s like 30 EXIT games; you really do have to shake it up and try new things. Now, I’m going back on that thing I just said and also noting that some of the concepts not landing for me contributed to the score, but what would writing be if I told you what I was going to do and then did it? It would be boring. Predictable. Inelegant. Not What’s Eric Playing?, no sir. We do things ad hoc. But the major branch from the main EXIT line here is the introduction of these interesting clock cards. In this game, you are only allowed to look at a clock card when you see that time presented somewhere in the game. It’s likely designed to give the players some sense of actual time progressing without there being a time deadline. This is really interesting, albeit a bit unrefined, in this instance. The cards end up feeling a bit like a second set of Riddle Cards, in that you really can’t complete certain puzzles without them. I like the seek-and-find element of it a lot, otherwise; I just feel like they felt not particularly integrated. Otherwise, though, there were some great puzzles in here! Good use of physical components, a great bit of light-based puzzlery that I could actually do without having to be in the dark; you love to see it. I particularly like how we’re working with numbers often as physical representations in this game, even if we occasionally fall into the pattern of “a five letter number that starts with an S? That’s a seven; we’re done here.” That happens in, say, 80% of EXIT games anyways.

So like I said, some of that conceptual stuff worked really well or pretty well! Not all of it, though. There felt like there were many new ideas being tested here and new material types and such. That’s cool. Some of them seem like the Brands are hell-bent on making as much of a mess as humanly possible, to the point that I was extremely disinclined to do one puzzle on my nice gaming table in my nice game room. The expectation is clearly that you’ll be doing this EXIT at home; I’d be shocked if you were able to do what this asked at a library or a game cafe, and I’d even be personally against doing one of these puzzles at a friend’s place. Unfortunately, this puzzle was kind of the Big Deal Puzzle of the box, so that ended up feeling like kind of a letdown. Another puzzle also kind of quite literally depended on doing that puzzle correctly, which ended up making even more of a mess. I think it’s possible to do properly with minimal mess, but … this is getting needlessly cryptic. Take it from me, this one has some issues being played outside of a home setting, and while that may be intended, it’s still a bummer. I also would have liked a little bit more investment in the theme. The game felt lacking from a theme standpoint, and, I mean, it’s Venice. There’s one big thing but some other thematic elements sprinkled throughout would have helped me feel more invested.

Overall, while I still enjoyed The Venice Conspiracy, I do think it’s not the EXIT game I would lead with. This one’s for the completionists. New players may be vexed by this or the still very likely mess that can be made, and I think there are better entry points into the EXIT series. I do like some of the concepts presented here, though, and with refinement I’d love to see them come back again! It would especially be fun to see something like the time cards pop up in an Advent Calendar as part of an ongoing meta-puzzle, since there you don’t necessarily expect to see them. That all said, there are still some fun puzzles in this one, as per the usual for EXIT, so if you’re unfazed by some mess, you enjoy solving a mystery, or you just want to try your luck in Venice, EXIT: The Venice Conspiracy may still be worth checking out!

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