Ryokan Journey: Escape Game

Episode 7, Moon Viewing Ryokan, is here. A cloudy mid-autumn night at a lakeside inn. Raise a forty-year-old clockwork moon with your own finger. 11 puzzles and 45 steps.

Ryokan Journey is a series of escape games set in traditional Japanese inns (ryokan). Seven inns are included now.

Episode 1: Winter Ryokan An old farmhouse inn deep in snow country. You wake on a snowy night to find every door shut. Search the hearth room and the storeroom behind the wooden door, solve nine contraptions, and step out into the snowlit garden.

Episode 2: Autumn Ryokan A hot-spring inn in the autumn mountains. You can see the open-air bath beyond the room, but the glass door to the garden has an unfamiliar lock. Collect three tags, open the lock, and head for the bath.

Episode 3: Sakura Ryokan (additional inn, in-app purchase) A spring night in a detached cottage of an inn in the hills of Kyoto. Outside the paper screens, a weeping cherry glows white in the moonlight. Solve the puzzles hidden in a folding screen, sweet dumplings and a tea-serving karakuri doll, light the lantern, and go out into the night sakura garden.

Episode 4: Firefly Ryokan (additional inn, in-app purchase) A summer night at a riverside inn in the mountains. Wind chimes ring softly outside the paper screens. Search the river room, the earthen-floor kitchen and the courtyard, solve ten contraptions, and step out onto the riverside deck where fireflies dance.

Episode 5: New Year Ryokan (additional inn, in-app purchase) New Year's Eve at an inn on a cape overlooking the sea. The innkeeper is away, and every door is closed by his contraptions. Read the pages of his diary, solve eleven contraptions with kites, battledores, a sugoroku board and a compass stone, raise the flag on the lookout, and watch the first sunrise of the year.

Episode 6: Peach Blossom Ryokan (additional inn, in-app purchase) An afternoon on March 3, Girls' Day, at an island inn where peach trees bloom. The family has gone to the shrine by the beach, and the doll stand is still empty. Solve contraptions with a folding screen, gears and a ruler to find the boxes of hina dolls, hand the musicians their instruments, set out the tiny furnishings, and finish before the family returns on the evening boat.

Episode 7: Moon Viewing Ryokan (additional inn, in-app purchase) A mid-autumn night at a small two-story inn on the shore of a lake. Thick clouds hide the moon. Move the forty-year-old clockwork moon with your finger, and the shadows on the white sand move with it. Solve eleven contraptions and raise the moon before dawn.

HOW TO PLAY

• Choose an inn on the first screen
• Tap anything that catches your eye to examine it
• Use the left and right arrows to turn, and the down arrow to go back
• Select an item you found, then tap where you want to use it
• Stuck? Tap the light bulb for three levels of hints (the last one is the answer)
• Your progress is saved automatically for each inn

FEATURES

• Beautiful 3D scenes of seven inns, from a snowy farmhouse to a lakeside inn under a clockwork moon, redrawn every time something changes
• Over 240 moves of Japanese contraptions across seven inns: a rotary phone dial, icicle locks, a secret puzzle box, mirror writing, a tea-serving doll, a firefly cage that glows in the dark, a sugoroku board with jumping squares, a moon you move with your finger, and more
• Puzzles that don't depend on language
• Bonus: collect ten of something in each inn, from camellias to paper moons, to unlock a hidden reward. After escaping, you can walk the inn again to find the ones you missed
• Available in English, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional) and Korean
• For iPhone and iPad

ABOUT HINTS The first and second hints are always available. The third hint, the answer, can be seen by watching a short video or by purchasing the Answer Key. The Answer Key unlocks the answers for every inn with a single purchase.

No horror. Take your time, as if you were relaxing at an inn.