In this review, I take a look at an Escape Box from the German company EscapeWelt, specifically their Quest Pyramid. 

Quest Pyramid is a wooden puzzle box with an Egyptian theme that, according to Escape Welt, is the easiest of their wooden puzzles. 

Disclosure: Thank you EscapeWelt for sending us a review copy of this box. Links in this post may be affiliate links. As an Amazon associate we earn from qualifying purchases. 

Who is Escape Welt and what’s an Escape Room Box?

We first discovered EscapeWelt’s Puzzle Boxes during the holidays of 2022. Escape Welt is a German escape room company that shifted to become a wooden puzzle company during the pandemic.  All of their puzzles are laser cut birch wood and include traditional flat puzzles as well as what they call Escape Room Games. 

These are 3D “escape room in a box” experiences where instead of trying to solve puzzles to break out of a room you are instead trying to solve puzzles to break into a wooden box.

When you open up the packaging for one of these puzzles you are presented with a chunky, solid, wooden box and no guidance on how to start solving it. It’s up to you to figure out how to open it. Though they do include a QR code to a solution in case you get stuck. 

Check out our Quest Pyramid Unboxing Video On YouTube, to see exactly what one of these puzzles looks like when you first open it. 

One great aspect about Escape Welt’s puzzle boxes is that once you’ve opened them you end up with a physical artifact that looks great on a shelf and makes a good conversation piece. Even better, you can use your new box as a gift box and double the fun by hiding a gift inside and then giving it to someone else. They not only get a gift from you but also a cool puzzle they have to solve first in order to get to the gift.  

I really enjoyed solving the Quest Pyramid Puzzle box from EscapeWelt. 

The Quest Pyramid from EscapeWelt is the chunkiest wooden puzzle I’ve personally played around with. This is a surprisingly heavy, dense, box that’s pleasing to hold. It feels significantly less fragile than other similar puzzles and I had very little worry about breaking anything while trying to solve it. 

The wood here is well cut and the various etchings on the puzzle are very clear. 

One of the best parts about this puzzle is that it presents a very clear starting point, and what is basically a set of step by step instructions on how to solve it, on the bottom of the puzzle. Now I don’t mean that it gives you a solution but that it gives you hints on what to look for first, what you should do after that, and so on.

This particular puzzle has four main steps to it with some being more intuitive than others. I appreciated that the first step in particular was very clear which let you accomplish something quickly after picking up the puzzle. This is a nice touch as it stops players from getting frustrated before they’ve even really begun.

The later steps aren’t quite so simple and were just challenging enough for me. Both my podcast co-host and I were working on this puzzle together and while I figured out the first step, Sean was the one that noticed a key clue for solving the next one. 

While trying to get the Quest Pyramid open we did get stuck a few times, and that’s not a bad thing.

Our copy of the puzzle sat on my game table for a while, at our kitchen table for an afternoon, and then later on my desk for about a week, and got played with by various members of the family through that time period. As the week went on people figured out various bits of the puzzle but never the full solution. Then just the other day I had an epiphany about one part of the puzzle, went back, and was able to finish solving it in a matter of minutes. 

Overall, I found this box to be one of those puzzles that wasn’t so difficult as to be frustrating but also wasn’t so easy that we solved it the first time we sat down and played with it. When I did eventually figure out the part we were stuck on I felt smart and I really loved the fourth part of the puzzle which I don’t want to spoil here. 

At no time did I require any outside help to solve this box, nor did I have to brute force anything. I was able to solve each aspect of the puzzle by following the clues on the box itself.

The only problem I had with this box is that I ended up chipping a piece of wood off of the final prize once I got the box open. This was a minor flaw that was easily fixed with some white glue, but it’s something I did want to call out. 

One final thing to note, for those who do manage to solve this puzzle. Once you get it open be careful putting it back together! Make sure everything lines up and watch for the notch. If you put things back together the wrong way around don’t panic. You can still re-open the box, but you will have to account for the fact that the sides will now be facing the wrong way.

Who should pick up the Quest Pyramid escape box?

Of all of the puzzles we’ve tried from EscapeWelt, the Quest Pyramid is my favourite. As advertised by Escape Welt themselves this really was the easiest puzzle of theirs to solve, though I still wouldn’t call it easy. 

That said we are still pretty new to this type of game experience and I have a feeling that someone who plays with a lot of this style of puzzle boxes may not find Quest Pyramid to be much of a challenge. For myself, as well as my family and friends, we found the difficulty to be pretty much perfect. 

Unlike the other EscapeWelt boxes we reviewed in the past ( The Fort Knox Box and the House of Dragon), I didn’t feel the need to look up the solution or check out videos online. Being able to solve this puzzle without any outside help (other than some of us teaming up to solve it) felt really good. 

What I like the most about all of the EscapeWelt boxes is how they make fantastic gift boxes when you are done solving them and I appreciate the slightly larger interior space this pyramid has when compared to the other two puzzles we own. The compartment in Quest Pyramid is two inches square and while it won’t fit a plastic gift card, it gives you quite a bit of room for smaller gifts. Personally, I like to hide Nintendo Switch game cartridges for my kids in these puzzle boxes.

In addition to a larger space I also thought the final prize in this puzzle was cooler than the others that I’ve seen. This isn’t a big deal though and really the real prize is playing with and solving the puzzle itself. 

Overall I think the Quest Pyramid from EscapeWelt is a perfect entry level wooden puzzle box. It’s a great looking physical object that is easy to manipulate and has a very clear set of clues to get you started solving things right away. Overall the difficulty is low without being too easy. It’s just hard enough to make you feel smart when you finally figure out the solution to each step. 

If you are puzzle box curious or know someone who is, this seems like a great purchase to me. If you, like us, are just discovering this genre of game, this puzzle would also be a good choice. The Quest Pyramid was a refreshing change after trying some more difficult boxes (including one we have here, EscapeWelt’s Space Box, where we still haven’t even figured out the first step yet). 

The Quest Pyramid is also a good place to try out this genre of games if you’ve never played around with one before.

You really don’t know what you are missing if you’ve never held a good wooden puzzle box in your hands. Once you pick up one of these puzzles you can’t help but start pulling, pushing, tugging, and flipping it around as you try to solve it. 

Where I’m not sure about this particular puzzle is if you are an experienced wooden puzzle box fan. I worry that this particular puzzle box may be too simple. That said, maybe this would be a good one to pick up to get your non-puzzle fan friends or family hooked so they can join in on the fun. 

For any of the above, if you do decide to pick up one of these puzzles direct from EscapeWelt, you can save 10% if you use our special discount code BELLHOP. 

I never really thought of myself as a puzzle person. Puzzles are something my dad used to enjoy but not a style of game that I got into myself. That’s part of why I’m so shocked by how much I’ve been enjoying these Escape Welt Puzzles. 

Since opening up the House of the Dragon for the first time, live on Twitch, and having to fight to stop myself from sitting there and fiddling with the thing and trying to solve it while still on the air, I’ve been hooked. 

Now that I’ve got the Quest Pyramid solved, I am trying to figure out EscapeWelt’s hardest box, the Space Box and not having much luck so far. When I do get that one open I’ll be sure to share my thoughts here on the blog, on The Tabletop Bellhop Gaming Podcast and on YouTube.