Shadows Over Middle Earth
15 May 2022
at home
4.0 out of 5.0 stars
As an original Ringer, I was very excited to hear that Exit was releasing a Lord Of The Rings themed game this year! Shadows Over Middle Earth is rated two out of five in difficulty, so definitely more of a beginner game.
As with all Exit games, it’s played with a series of card decks, a few “mysterious objects”, a small book, and a decoder disc to help you along. The story is very compelling, Frodo is tasked with smuggling the ring to Mount Doom, and to help him get away with it, your band of friendly Hobbits is tasked with creating distractions along the way. This way, the player gets to follow Frodo’s path from Hobbiton to Mordor, stopping at all the major locations along the journey, which is a brilliant way to tie in the franchise with the game.
Seeing as the difficulty rating isn’t very high, I did expect the riddles to be on the easier side, and they definitely were. However, to make up for that, a lot of them involved physical items (all provided and all recyclable) within the game to stretch the tasks a little bit. I thought this was a very clever way to extend play value for experienced players while not complicating it for newer ones.
The story flowed very well, everything seemed quite logical and in sequence, and I very much enjoyed playing this game. Definitely one of the best franchise tie-ins I’ve seen recently!
Okay, I might be a bit biased as a huge LOTR fan, but I definitely recommend giving this one a go, it’s really fun and immersive!