Crawley, Feb 2022
Dodge City is one of a small number of games that I deliberately played way after most enthusiasts had rushed to it, because expectations were high enough that it seemed worth saving for a suitable moment. I also wanted a larger team than usual. Where I choose to play most games with a team of two or three, Dodge was reputably only a little less tough than the infamous Nethercott Manor. We did in fact escape it in time, but with only a few minutes spare, and I was glad we’d brought the extra hands.
Curiously, Dodge City is set in the year 2127, but in essentially all respects this is a traditional Wild West game of sheriffs and outlaws. You’re on the shadier side of the law, and your job is to break out, gather gold and escape. Doing so involves, above all, solving puzzles: Tulleys aren’t shy about including padlocks or having puzzles for the sake of puzzles.
The puzzle design is reliable throughout, and I don’t remember any flawed logic at all in this game, but what stands out is the sheer quantity. For any normal group to have a hope of completing Dodge in an hour, you’ll need to work in parallel most of the time. That inevitably means you won’t see some pieces of game, but I didn’t find that that resulted in FOMO. Although the game is consistently good, there are only a few puzzles that are really memorable and which you’d be missing out by not seeing. And the game is designed such that, even if you’re all split up working on different things most of the way through, for the highlights you’re funnelled back together again so that no one misses out.
Tulleys is widely acknowledged as one of the most lavish, impressive and standout companies in the U.K., but their reputation isn’t always reflected in their ranking on this site. If there’s one reason for that it’s due to players dissatisfied that the games are sold as 60 min rooms, but have the content of a 90 mins game. That applies most of all to Nethercott, closely followed by Dodge. Both games can be beaten in 60 mins, even by a team of two, but only really by an experienced group playing well and splitting up whenever possible. Personally I wish they were available as 90 min games, but that’s the company’s prerogative to decide; when playing Dodge or another of their high difficulty rooms, the important thing is to be aware of the level of challenge and to adjust your play style and/or expectations accordingly.
Tulleys’ games are lavish and super-sized in a way very few other U.K. games can match. Dodge City was probably the one I personally enjoyed playing the most, though the quality of their games is consistent enough that that comes down to personal taste and individual experience rather than any one game being clearly ahead of the rest. That I enthusiastically recommend playing it should go without saying. 
