People are vanishing on the outskirts of an Appalachian town! As a determined park ranger, save them by solving the mind-bending puzzles in Aurora Hills: Chapter 1. Journey from a cluttered ranger station into the eerie forest beyond, where you’ll craft crucial items and decipher scrawled messages. What happened here?

What we love: The cleverly linked puzzles. See that magnetic dart in the gift shop? Tie a string around it to snag a key dropped down a sewer grate. What’s that oddly scribbled pattern on a towel dispenser? It might be the key to unlocking a nearby shed. Everything is connected – you just have to figure out how!

Quick tip: The pairs of numbers scattered around the woods (like the 7 and 8 carved into the picnic bench) are vital to opening the toolbox. To figure out the combination, note the shapes around the numbers, plus their orientation.

Meet the creator: As kids, brothers Julian and Chris Stys challenged each other with homemade escape rooms. After founding NovaSoft Interactive in their dorm room at the University of Alberta, the pair spent more than two years working on Aurora Hills. They’re also behind the point-and-click puzzler Meridian 157.