Pilot an experimental robot through 60 minutes of mind boggling challenges designed by the award winning team behind Eltham Escape Rooms and Bewilder Box Drag, drop, solve and sleuth your way through each interactive puzzle, with every action synced across your team.
Rating: Unique
Completion Time: 56 minutes 18 seconds
Date Played: 30th July 2020
Party Size: 4
Recommended For: A small team wanting to collaborate together on the same screen
If I had a penny for every time someone told me I HAD to play The B.R.U.C.E. Project by Bewilder Box I’d be… Well… A bit better off than I am now. Point being, this game felt like a long awaited rite of passage I needed to play.
Having finished it I can now say that no, it’s not my favourite play at home game every but I completely understand why everyone enjoys this so much. It’s really UNIQUE and cracks a lot of problems of collaboration that other escape games still struggle with. So, a big round of applause for Bewilder Box and Eltham Escape Room’s ingenuity!
The story goes, you and your team of players take control of a little 8-bit robot as he travels around the mysterious Sector X. A professor has been killed and by solving a series of puzzles you, the intrepid players, get to find out what happened.
Or that’s the idea anyway. I have to admit, inbetween all the loud airhorn sounds we’re allowed to press *pew pew pewww*, robot jokes, and enthusiastic commentary from my team, I lost track of the story a bit. I have absolutely no idea what did happen to the professor in the end… But that’s okay! I don’t think this game’s is really meant to be about the narrative. Therefore, it doesn’t really matter why you’re there and what you’re doing. It’s just for fun and doesn’t take itself too seriously. *pew pew*
In terms of gameplay and puzzles, The B.R.U.C.E. Project replicates a lot of real life escape room puzzles you’d expect to play in a room, but does so in a digital format. For example, there’s one where you have to line up different length keys into different depth holes. There’s also quite a few where you have to cross-reference visual data (note – we got around a lot of these by taking quickly photographs and screenshots of bits and bobs we could come back to later).
These all work very well, you can see what all other players are doing up on the screen and of course everyone has their own icon and mouse to control and. Just like in a real escape room, you have to work together and really think about what you’re doing and why. No button mashing here… Or maybe just a little.
For that reason, I think the creators of this game have really thought hard about the genre of escape rooms and what that might look in a digital format. Needless to say, I think they nailed it! I’m very, very excited to see where this technology goes in the future and what digital/play at home escape rooms will look like soon. It’s an exciting time to be in lockdown.
The B.R.U.C.E. Project can be purchased for £15 on Bewilder Box’s website.
[…] the most enjoyable things about playing Carnival was that the game is collaborative in the same way The B.R.U.C.E. Project is, making it perfect for playing remotely with friends via Zoom. Whilst playing, there’s a […]