The Palace of Destiny is an online puzzle adventure. Explore the Palace one room at a time and solve puzzles and other mysteries along the way. The adventure is not timed and internet research is fair game.
Rating: Incredibly Detailed!
Completion Time: 3+ Hours
Date Played: 26th February 2021
Party Size: 1
Recommended For: Fans of Puzzle Hunts, folks with access to Google
I picked up Palace of Destiny one afternoon whilst waiting for a particularly long dinner to cook… And I didn’t finish. So I picked up the game again a few days later whilst watching Unsolved Mysteries… Still didn’t manage to finish. I did a couple more rooms over lunch another day, then a few more another day… And yep, I’m still not finished.
At the time of writing, I’ve completed 22 ‘rooms’ in the Palace of Destiny. How is it possible I’m not yet done? Well, the creators continuously add to the game with several new rooms a week! It’s an epic feat that’s gone on for months and months now, meaning this game is HUGE.
At some point whilst playing I had to draw the line at where to stop in order to write this review. Apparently that line is 22 rooms- So I’ll take that! So this review is based on that experience only! But of course, I’ve had a huge amount of fun so far and wholly anticipate coming back and ‘finishing’, if such a thing is even possible.
There’s a review up on Escape the Review which send me down a rabbit hole. It described this game as more of a Puzzle Hunt. Difficult for an escape room, easy for a Puzzle Hunt – so somewhere in the middle for me! But, with that status of ‘puzzle hunt’ mean’s The Palace of Destiny is not quite an escape room – sure, you’re technically trying to escape through a series of mysterious never-ending rooms, but it follows a slightly different style. For starters, there’s no ending! Then, there’s also the fact that each room is essentially self contained. Oh! And most importantly, you can (and probably should!!) use the internet to figure out (or search for) the correct answer.
Some examples of this include puns about musical theatre and famous folks, US presidents, knowledge of videogames, insects (lots of them), things that won awards, things that didn’t win awards, pop knowledge, Minecraft… You get the impression. Google is entirely necessary.
I also now have a strong craving for Ben and Jerrys Ice Cream after spending a particularly complex puzzle scouring the B&J website for clues. *drools at ice cream*
Whilst each room is more or less standalone, each puzzle is woven into the story creatively. One of the best parts of The Palace of Destiny game is that each room has a ‘theme’. Off the top of my head I remember a casino room, a mining room, arcade room, museum room and more. It made each room exciting and refreshing to enter, with creative and on-theme puzzles to boot.
What you get is a HUGE amount of content for free. You could sit down and spend days and days on the Palace of Destiny. You can, and probably should to get the most out of it!
What I’ve played so far I enjoyed – but I can’t wait to keep working through it. Being the completionist that I am, I vaguely hope there will be a ‘finish line’ some day, but in the mean time the wonderful beast this game keeps evolving to be bigger and better.
The Palace of Destiny is available to play for free on the Palace Sphere’s website.
