Before I discovered games like the Doors, Rooms and Boxes series, my first foray into puzzle box or diorama puzzle games came from Access Denied. It is a small, budget title that gives you a selection of metallic boxes to decode and solve so you can get the contents from them and move on. Flash forward over seven years later, Access Denied: Escape is more of the same – but this time it is wrapped up in an escape room overworld puzzle to solve too.
Whilst there is an overarching story told through computer monitors and left behind notes, the majority of Access Denied: Escape will see you decoding 30 puzzle boxes with self-contained puzzles. Each box will have three or four sides, with a few looking more like a flat tray, but they’ll all have various knobs, sliders, buttons and switches to play with. The game starts off quite simply, asking you to look for visual clues to solve maths puzzles or circuitry puzzles to turn on lights or gain access to a final code to open the box. Then it adds in a screwdriver to remove panels to find hidden information, or to loosen screws in a pattern. Batteries allow you to turn on and off functions of the box and as you only have three, you’ll need to memorise sequences and patterns to solve visual coding puzzles. There’s also a hologram visualiser used to spot hidden messages that often relate to looking up answers from a key card.
The key card is where the decoding side of the game hits its peak. If you spot certain letters, numbers or colour combinations, you can look up their meaning and input the appropriate answer to progress the puzzles along. This often means pulling sliders, inputting buttons, flicking switches and turning dials and I did find turning dials a bit fiddly using a controller. I can see how Access Denied: Escape would feel more natural using a mouse for some of its precision sliding, but the game adds in notches on sliders and dials to help you get to the right place you need. The controller works better on the overworld escape room puzzles. Whilst the escape room elements were nicely put together, they only make up about 15% of the gameplay and so it felt a touch underwhelming. You only use two rooms for the majority of the game so it’s down to the smaller game scope that the escape room aspect feels restrictive, rather than the puzzle design.
There is a progressive hint system that gives you three clues for each box if you need them. These don’t give you the full answer, they merely tell you where to start looking and what to think about, and I really liked this design. It kept me empowered when I needed help. It then made me laugh when I couldn’t find a specific item in the escape room portion and instead of telling me where to look, it just gave me the code I needed. Part of the problem was that on the PS5 version I played, the control UI kept telling me to press X to do something, but actually, it’s square that you need to press. This problem recurs across the entire game and I hope gets patched on release as I wouldn’t have needed some hints if the control scheme was correct on screen.
Whilst it isn’t quite on the top tier of puzzle box games (Doors Paradox is still the ultimate for me), Access Denied: Escape comes in at under half its price point. If you are curious about decoding physical boxes, and like the idea of needing to take screenshots and write down codes to solve mysteries – Access Denied: Escape is a great budget entry point to the subgenre. There is nothing wrong with what’s here, it’s just small in scope and scale. The price reflects this and so its a recommendation for a pint-sized puzzler.
Review copy provided by the publisher. Out now on PC and Consoles.
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