Category Archives: Video Games

Lost Sock Studio: Escape from Mystwood Mansion | Review

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Escape from Mystwood Mansion| In this first-person puzzle escape room game, you are trapped in the mysterious Mystwood mansion. Explore the mansion and find hidden compartments while solving puzzles and deciphering codes to find a way out. Will you escape or linger to uncover the mansion’s final secret?

Developer: Lost Sock Studio
Date Played: September 2023
Console: Steam
Number of Players: 1
Time Taken: 100 minutes

I don’t know why but I get really excited when I see a new name or new game studio pop up in our little ‘escape room’ niche corner of the internet. So when I started hearing about Escape from Mystwood Mansion from the brand new studio “Lost Sock”, I was more than intrigued! Lost Sock are about as indie as it’s possible to get – they’re a game developer duo from Sweden and this is their first release. And, well, for a first release, I was super impressed! Tt’s polished, the puzzles satisfying, and it’s comfortable to play. It’s also very marketable. I mean, that spooky old mansion and launching right before Halloween, it’s *chefs kiss*.

But enough about the marketability of a game like Escape from Mystwood Mansion, and let’s get into the nitty gritty of why I enjoyed this game!

 

Deliver a Package to the Library or Face the Consequence

Escape from Mystwood Mansion opens with you, the protagonist, stepping out of your delivery truck with a package. You knock on the door, the door swings open, and very quickly you find yourself trapped. You are Test Subject Number 83, and it’s clear from the narrative of the game you’re not the first to be locked in by the house – nor will you be the last!

What follows is a classic escape room adventure as you move from room to room, solving puzzles, finding keys, cracking codes, and uncovering secret doors. Sometimes you’re breaking things too. I love breaking things.

 

 

At the very beginning, you’re given the instruction to “deliver the package to the library”. I actually never got to deliver the package to the library – I think I lost the package somewhere along the way, although I did (for a while) try to keep it with me. Whether this means I ‘won’ or not, I’m not sure, but I certainly escaped and so I’m calling my 110 minutes in the game a resounding success. I escaped from the library itself, as well as a lovely conservatory room, several secret (and slightly creepy) hidden passages, and the foyer.

Now, on my successful exit from Mystwood Mansion, I discovered a secret door that hinted that there were a few tiny details I had missed. At the time of writing, I’ve unlocked two out of the three secret locks to the secret room, and I’m thoroughly looking forward to going back and figuring out what is behind the mysterious final door. But for the meantime, the game is complete.

It’s very hard not to compare this game to Escape Simulator. Thematically, it’s quite similar to the Escape Simulator levels set in a spooky old mansion. The controls feel the same, the movement feels the same, and even a few puzzles are very similar. The game gives me the feeling of playing an Escape Simulator level, for example one from the vast wealth of community workshop escape rooms available on it’s platform. One of the most memorable puzzles in Escape Simulator was a ‘butterfly sequence’ puzzle in which you could move the butterflies around in order to complete the sequence. Now, sequence puzzles are common, but sequence puzzles specifically involving butterflies… Less so!

 

The View from the Butterfly Room

 

But for each ‘this is similar’ puzzle, there were countless others which were wholly original – so there’s a balance for sure. It also differs from Escape Simulator in a few marked ways. The levels are enormous, and each room rolls onto the other to build up a big picture of a large house. There’s an underlying story, and touches of light humour I really appreciated. Fans of Escape Simulator will love this.

 

Puzzling Through Mystwood Mansion

In terms of puzzles, I really enjoyed these. In fact, the puzzles were some of my favourite things in the whole experience. They really felt like escape room puzzles in the classic sense of the word. A few I recognised right away – there’s some pretty common ciphers in there, including Morse Code, Pigpen, as well as a few dashes of anamorphic text and negative space puzzles. But even then, there were plenty other puzzles I didn’t recognise at all and gave my brain a run for it’s money! Over the course of the game, I used very few hints – just a few to confirm what I already knew if something wasn’t working quite the way I expected.

Escape from Mystwood Mansion probably errs on the side of a little short for a game in the genre. For a seasoned escapist who wants to complete everything in the game, you’re looking at around 120 minutes. I took 110, with plenty of breaks, and didn’t quite complete everything. So let’s add on 30 minutes for “going back in and looking for hidden clues I missed”. To get 100% achievements, you’re probably looking at 3 hours. Each ‘room’ itself takes around half an hour to solve, so you’ve travelling through the game quite quickly.

I had almost no technical issues with the game. I say almost, because I did tweak the settings in order to make my playthrough slightly more comfortable (I like my mouse sensitivity as low as possible!), and secondly because I’m convinced that after searching a room top to bottom that a key item was missing – and needed to reset the level in order to find it in it’s place. Personally, I think the extra item disappeared into the ether. Knowing me I probably picked it up and moved it, but after a good 15 minutes of searching, I had no choice but to reset the room.

 

 

The Verdict

I’m giving Escape from Mystwood Mansion a solid 4.4/5. Yeah! That’s quite high, but I stand by it. I genuinely had fun playing the game. There’s been a big “escape room game” shaped hole in my life right now that nothing on Steam was quite scratching, and this game came along at the perfect time. It felt spooky, and cosy and exciting in all the right ways, and I felt the designers attention to detail was second to none. I’m also genuinely in awe that it’s the company’s first game. It had a really professional level of polish and I’m absolutely certain this game will be a success.

Is it perfect? No, of course not. But is it good? Yeah! It really is.

I’d recommend this game for just about anyone, but if you’re a big fan of physical escape rooms, this one is fantastic.

 

Please Note: We were offered a free Steam key in exchanged for an honest review. This does not affect the content of our review.

Escape from Mystwood Mansion can be downloaded from Steam.

Turbo Button: Floor Plan 2 | Review

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Floor Plan 2 Review | A comedy adventure inspired by escape rooms, packed with more puzzles than you can fit in an elevator. On your first day of work, the boss sends you on an errand to retrieve a lost treasure that will turn the company’s fortunes around. And good news: it’s somewhere in the building! Just use the elevator down the hall. Oh, and by the way, each floor is a gateway to another world, nobody speaks your language, and time and space are fluid.

Developer: Turbo Button
Date Played: Summer 2022
Console: Oculus
Number of Players: 1
Time Taken: 6-8 hours

Listen, I LOVE Floor Plan 2.

That’s it. That’s the review. Stop what you’re doing, grab your VR headset and give it a download.

It’s one of those games that even though I finished months and months ago sometimes I just log into it for fun.

We’ve mentioned Floor Plan 2 in other posts, such as this one (which is somehow still our most read article on this whole website by a massive margin), but somehow it flew under our radar to write a full review until now.

So, full disclosure, we as The Escape Roomer were given a code to play. Unfortunately for personal reasons the specific reviewer who was assigned to the game wasn’t able to complete the review. The months rolled on and regrettably Floor Plan 2 slipped down in our priority list. Until one day I sat down and thought to myself – hey, I could really do with a fun escape room VR game right now. I DMed the original reviewer assigned, since they were one of the only other people I knew with a VR headset and passion for puzzles, and the name Floor Plan 2 came up. So I went off and purchased a copy.

So whilst this review isn’t comped exactly, this review was sparked by an “oh my god this game is so fun why haven’t we reviewed it yet” …”oh wait” moment. As such, it’s a completely honest and unbiased and perhaps a little over-excited verdict on Turbo Button’s Floor Plan 2. The verdict? It’s fantastic and I love it.

 

Are you ready to climb the corporate ladd- I mean, elevator?

So yes, I love this game, but equally I’d be lying if I said that some moments in this game didn’t frustrate me so much I wanted to virtually slap the stick of butter out of the strange little creatures’ hand and shout at my CEO. But good art should make you feel raw, visceral emotions, right? Which also brings me to the other big thing I wanted to say about this game: It’s comedy. It’s surreal. It’s mind-bendingly bizarre yet also so surprisingly recognisably corporate too.

It reminds me a lot of those point and click puzzle adventures from the 90s and 00s. You know the ones I mean – where you wander around locations picking up objects and combining them in surprising ways to create unimaginable outcomes all in the name of puzzle solving. Floor Plan 2 is similar in a way – you collect objects as you go, and then eventually you’ll find a use for the object – and it definitely won’t be how you expected it!

But this is where the puzzles get much more interesting than anything else we’ve encountered. Floor Plan 2 is in VR… So throw all your preconceived notions about how games work out the window. For starters, your mode of transport is an elevator (or lift, here in the UK) taking you between floors of a large sky scraper. Some objects can’t be taken in the elevator, so how are you supposed to get them to the floor above or below? Well there in lies one of the first big puzzles.

 

 

Okay… So it’s an office block? I get it.

Do you? Because I’m not sure I do! Because the things you find in the office block are bizarre. Try a nightclub chicken party. A bathroom that rotates 360 degrees. An ancient Egyptian tomb. Outer space. A bumblebee kingdom. It’s bright, it’s colourful, and it’s a joy to spend time in. Floor Plan 2 is playful in its environment design, and even more playful with it’s puzzles and absolutely nothing can be taken for granted. Not even gravity. For all of these reasons and more, I absolutely adore this game.

My favourite moment in the game is the moment that first sold me on the idea of the game. It’s you, you’re sitting behind a desk, and people come to you with their problems. They scoot up on chairs and express their issues to you in loud voices that sound like someone going “bleh bleh bleh” into the microphone. No shade, I think its hilarious. You with your little name badge and boring desk job solve their problems. After all, this is Puzzl Corporation, and your company’s motto is to solve any problem.

 

 

At some point, you get promoted and gain access to the elevators, and this is where the game ‘really’ begins. Cue all the bizarre gravity defying chickenery.

The puzzles themselves are a mixed bag in terms of difficulty. There are some real tricky moments where you’re pulling your hair out, and many other moments where you walk in and have a sense of exactly what you need to do. Overall I’d probably say it’s a little bit too tricky – for the light-hearted, almost childlike environment, there were a few times where I almost put my headset down and didn’t return. But the difficulty of the puzzles makes for a longer, and much more satisfying game when you do eventually solve it all.

In all, the base game lasts about 1-2 hours for the core game, but after which an “overtime” remixed version of the experience is unlocked in which players can explore freely and try out new versions of old puzzles. One of the things you can do in “overtime” is hunt for missing pets, scattered throughout the building. Doing this unlocks new hands you can try out. Yes – really. A “totally not painful procedure” where you stick your hands into a loud machine and your hands come out completely different…

Do with that information whatever you will, but I had a blast!

 

 

A Comfortable Ride in the Elevator?

As with all VR games, I like to mention comfort – because VR isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Floor Plan 2 gives the players a fixed position teleportation system. Since most of the game happens in the elevator, you’d do well to make space in your floor to move freely about the elevator – maybe 2×2 meters to be safe. Beyond this, when the elevators open you can teleport to a fixed space within the room outside. In this way, it’s one of the least nauseating games in VR, and very suitable for people prone to VR sickness. You could even play the game sitting down, if you wanted to.

Similarly, the graphics are bright and colourful but very simple shapes – so I never experienced any game breaking or lagging issues on my device (Oculus Quest 2). It runs smoothly, feels comfortable to play, and is a fun experience start to finish.

 

Floor Plan 2: Backside Story

So why am I writing this review now exactly? Well, at the time of writing Floor Plan 2 had just released a brand new, FREE upgrade called Backside Story.

When an ancient elevator awakens and the experts are busy, it’s up to you and the PuzzScouts to retrieve the lost treasures that lie within.

I already owned the game, so all I needed to do was hit update, pop my headset on, and I was immediately transported back into Puzzl Corporation. And yes, I immediately started grinning from ear to ear! I was BACK! Back in this wacky, ridiculous, wonderful world of Floor Plan 2 for all new puzzles in all new locations. In this upgrade, players are contacted by a member of the PuzzScouts who needs help. You’re sent into a brand new elevator in search of three specific items hidden across 6 new locations.

In the new locations, there’s a Dungeons and Dragons themed maze with wizards and knights, there’s a circus tent with definitely-rigged games to play, and there’s a cockroach hotel room of corridors and locked doors to be accessed. In all these three locations, the elevator now gives you the ability to go “behind the scenes” on them. These are new locations in and of themselves, and the key to success with these puzzles will be seamlessly interacting with the front – and the back of the same location to succeed.

 

 

If you don’t already own Floor Plan 2 and wanted to buy it, this upgrade will be available with your purchase. However be mindful that the game will now be slightly more expensive overall (just a $5 increase).

In any case, I really love that the developers added this in. It patches a lot of things from the base game including plenty of accessibility options, which I love, but more importantly it added a huge amount of gameplay for free. The addition added an extra hour or two onto the base game (or in my case, at least 3 because I got very very stuck on one particular moment and spent days faffing!) is no small feat! It’s not so common that developers finish a game, and then return and add more content to the game just because they want to make it an even better game, but I applaud them for it.

 

 

Floor Plan 2 (and Backside Story) – The Verdict

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but Floor Plan 2 is a world that is an absolute joy to spend time in. It’s like a cross between a classic escape room and a game like Job Simulator, but more fun than both of those. When people ask me what VR games I recommend, this one comes up again and again. For goofy silly fun, but actual brain-boggling puzzles that really make you scratch your head – or rather, scratch the top of your VR visor.

For the absolute silliness and bonkers attitude of this game, we’ve decided to award it the special “Fun Factor” badge – awarded to games which are extra fun to play. You can read more about our award badges here.

FUN FACTOR All games are fun, but look out for the Fun Factor badge on any review that goes all out on fun!

 

Floor Plan 2 is available on Oculus and Steam VR.

P.S. Whilst we did receive a copy for free, the reviewer in this case (me) is not the recipient of that free copy.

February Scissors: Reflection VR | Review

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Reflection is a Chinese VR puzzle game. The puzzle is innovative and unique. Players will challenge a multi-dimensional space created by the mirror, and use mirrors to solve puzzles by manipulating the world in mirror and enter it. Puzzles including Logic, Physics, Space, Time and so on.

Developer: February Scissors
Date Played: June 2023
Console: Oculus
Number of Players: 1
Time Taken: 3 hours

I first heard about Reflection back when it released on Steam in September 2022. At the time, I was dying to play it. But for some reason (and I’m still not sure why) my VR headset just doesn’t vibe with Steam. So unfortunately I had to wait until June 2023 to finally get my hands on a copy – and it was well worth the wait!

In truth, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from February Scissors’ new game, Reflection. They’re a very small, indie games development company out of China. I’m not overly familiar with Chinese puzzle games – I’ve never played any escape rooms (physical or digital) or even any Chinese tabletop games. I suppose this has a lot to do with the language barrier – but also that China has such a booming puzzle game market there’s almost no need to translate and export. Except this is why Reflection is so cool – it doesn’t use language in any way. Besides the occasional prompt on my VR headset to ‘pick up an item’, I don’t think a single word was uttered by any of the ‘characters’. Sure, there were plenty of landscape items with Chinese letters dotted around in the environment – carved into stone or on lanterns, but none of this needed to be translated. In a similar way, a lot of the communication in this game is done visually – you’re exploring temples, with mountains rising out of the mist around you. Everything felt intuitive – walking around, picking up objects, waving them and moving them around. It’s languageless, and yet I still feel like I understand the story that went into it.

 

 

A Reflective Genius

The concept is simple: Reflection is a puzzle game where you use mirrors to manipulate the physical world around you. The game begins fairly straightforward – although I’m embarrassed to admit that I found even the earliest levels in the game tricky enough as they were. Quickly though, as new mechanics are introduced, the game becomes more difficult. At some point I even found myself shifting gravity and dropping objects in a throwback to the video game Portal.

In all there are seven distinction sections of the game, each introducing a new mechanic and adding to the complexity. The first few are about mirrors, the third introduces the ability to change paintings around you, the fourth bends space and the fifth takes that even further by allowing you to flip the whole world upside down, in the sixth you play with the butterfly effect, and finally you can manipulate time. Pretty powerful for little old me, huh.

Is it difficult? Honestly? Yeah! I’m so used to puzzles that conform to the laws of physics that being placed into VR and told I can manipulate everything was hard. But it wasn’t insurmountably hard, and after a little pushing and pulling the edges of reality usually the puzzles slotted into place.

 

 

VR: Is it Comfortable?

If it weren’t already clear, Reflection is also a VR game, so rather than clicking a mouse, if you want to manipulate something – such as picking up an object or moving a mirror, you’ll do so in physical space around you. I played on my Oculus Quest 2, but I believe it’s also available on other VR headsets. In terms of controls and motion, I found it quite easy to use and fairly intuitive. When you’re holding a special lantern you can point and click to ‘teleport’ to any location. There’s quite a bit of turning your head around and stretching to look at something, but otherwise quite comfortable. That said, at some point I passed my headset to my partner – there was a really fun bow-and-arrow moment I wanted them to try – and being less familiar with VR, they said they found it gave them a slight bit of motion sickness. With that I’d probably rate it about 2/5 on the “this might make you feel ill” scale, with a VR rollercoaster at 5, and something like The Room (where you’re in a fixed position always) at 1.

With Reflection, you can jump in and out whenever you like. It’s broken up into mini-chapters, and whenever I left and came back it autosaved and took me back to the start of the mini-chapter I was on. So in general, I played this game in very short bursts – just a few levels at a time. On my lunch break, before I started work, whilst I waited for my partner to make us some lunch. For me, this felt like the perfect way to play it – in bitesized, satisfying puzzle pieces.

 

 

Reflection VR: The Verdict

I really enjoyed Reflection. We’re currently in this period of time where there aren’t a lot of exciting puzzle games out on the Oculus store (cue some angry people yelling in the background that there are). But all that to say, Reflection launched on Oculus at the perfect time where I was in limbo for a good puzzle VR game. It scratched that itch and gave me a thoroughly enjoyable couple of days of puzzle solving fun.

I’d recommend this game for anyone who wants something a little more gentle, relaxing, and slow-paced.

Reflection can be played on Oculus, or Steam. We played on Oculus!

We weren’t charged for the game but this does not influence our review in any way!

Eleven Puzzles: Unsolved Case | Review

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A new lead turns up old doubts about an ‘Unsolved Case’. A trap, or a copycat killer? In this co-op puzzle game prequel to the award-winning Cryptic Killer series, put on your detective badges as you collaborate and communicate to crack the codes, solve the riddles, and catch the Cryptic Killer.

Date Played: April 2023
Number of Players: 2
Time Taken: 30 mins
Difficulty: Easy

Although we became very familiar with digital escape rooms over the course of the pandemic, it’s been a while since I’ve played one. Last year I covered “Parallel Lab” by Eleven Puzzles, and greatly enjoyed it, so when I saw they had just released a new (free!) game, I absolutely had to play it. This is actually the first part of a larger game set to be released soon, which is even more exciting!

 

 

The Premise

Much like their previous game, this game requires two players on separate devices. This game actually supports cross-device playing, which meant I was able to Skype my mum and play on my computer, while she used her iPad, which she is more used to than playing on a computer. Part of the reason I love the Eleven Puzzles games so much is their ease of play – you are not tied to what the other person is doing and are fairly free to roam and interact as you like, and the gameplay is pretty much just point and click, so no tricky key combinations to figure out – any difficulty is just about the puzzles themselves!

In ‘Unsolved Case’ we return to the partnership of Ally and Old Dog, who have just received a mysterious briefcase each in their own apartments. These apartments happen to be fairly similar, and hold all the clues needed to crack the case open…

 

 

The Puzzles

All the puzzles in this game require cooperation, not just one or two. However, they’re also unique and creative in the way they require this teamwork. Certain puzzles may require you to do the same thing, with different results, while others require the sharing the information. One thing I noted as we played was how well-balanced these puzzles were – I never felt like I was missing out on the ‘aha’ moments, and similarly didn’t feel I was encountering them all. If there was ever a puzzle where I felt my mum was having all the fun, there was soon to be a similar puzzle where the role was reversed (although different enough that it wasn’t a cut-and-paste).

example with minor spoiler

At one point there is a puzzle that required my mum to essentially work out a maze (I think), and all I did was click a button to go left, right or forward. However, there was also a similar puzzle where I had to figure out which ‘doors’ to open or close and all my mum had to do was click a button with specific colours on. It’s a great example of balancing the gameplay with similar experiences, without it feeling identical.

 

 

In fact, I thought a lot of the puzzles were really well done – they were all creative while still being logical, if not too simple. At each stage, there is a padlock to unlock the next part of the story, with icons clearly showing which puzzles to solve to find the numbers. This meant we knew what we were doing and worked our way through each, even directly affecting each other’s rooms while doing so, which was a really fun.

 

 

The Verdict

I really enjoyed playing this – the playability was easy, puzzles were fun and interesting and it’s got a neat, comic book style. It’s a shame it was so short, but as it’s free I think this is a minor point! I would also say it would’ve been nice if there were slightly more independent puzzles too, to make it slightly less linear and bring a little more freedom. Overall though this is a really fun game to play, especially if your teammate is long distance, and I can’t wait to play the full game when it’s released soon!

Unsolved Case is free to play, and available on Steam, Android or iOS.

 

Please, Don’t Touch Anything VR | Review

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Please, Don’t Touch Anything VR Review | Covering for a colleague taking a bathroom break, you find yourself in front of a mysterious console with a green screen monitor showing a pixelated live image of an unknown city. Also present is an ominous red button with the simple instruction to not touch anything! Push the red button once or press it many times. Your choices and actions will lead to outrageous consequences and over 30 unique puzzle endings.

Developer: Four Squares, BulkyPix
Date Played: June 2022
Console: Oculus
Number of Players: 1
Time Taken: ~2 hours

Every time I saw a warning on this game that read “Not for the faint hearted” I thought “Hah! How bad can this be?! It’s just a game where you’re sitting in front of a console pressing buttons.” Then I found myself worshipping Satan, being scared out my mind by demon standing behind me, and watching the human race get wiped out… Repeatedly.

That said, I still wouldn’t describe it as a horror game. I’d describe it as a fixed perspective escape room game. Which is a fancy say of saying “button pushing simulator”. It’s just you and the console, and a lot of different outcomes. Where most escape rooms just have one (you escape), this has multiple. But the idea is the same, you’re solving puzzles and performing actions in a small 2x2m room to achieve them all. And let me just say… It was some of the most fun I’ve had in VR in a long time!

 

 

About Please, Don’t Touch Anything

The original “Please Don’t Touch Anything” was a short pixel art game released by a Russian indie studio Four Squares for PC way back in 2015. It received a large amount of praise and the studio, in collaboration with Escalation Studios then went on to release a 3D version of the experience just a year later with virtual reality support. Later the game was launched on Nintendo Switch, and has continued to be met with praise for many years since.

Skip forward to 2022, and I’m idly scrolling through the Oculus store with a 30% off voucher in hand looking for a new title to try out. I wanted something short, fun, puzzley, a little bit creepy. After punching those filters into the search engine, there was one title that kept coming back to me: Please, Don’t Touch Anything. Well, of course I wanted to immediately touch it.

 

 

“I’ll be right back, don’t touch anything!”

The game begins with you in a small room with a large console in front of you. Your colleague appears at the door and says he’s popping out for a quick bathroom break and for the love of god, he implores you not to touch anything on the console. With a wave, he’s gone. It’s just you and the room. Oh, and a giant red button.

Amusingly, on my first playthrough I didn’t touch anything. My colleague appeared back from the bathroom and thanked me for being so diligent, and the game ended. I was immediately respawned into the room and it begun again. This time, I hit the big red button and triggered a nuclear apocalypse…

So far so good.

If you can tell from that brief description, Please, Don’t Touch Anything is a game of many many endings. Thirty endings to be exact. It’s best played with no expectations – you walk in, you press buttons, or you don’t, and you get a curious ending. The game restarts and you’re immediately hooked on a need to uncover every single one. What happens if you push this button? How do you get the hammer? Is that a UV blacklight? With each playthrough a new facet of the world reveals itself. How will you destroy civilisation this time? Or will you simply press a switch 50 times and nothing will happen. Perhaps you’ll make it your mission to clean up this (very messy) room. All valid game choices all with unique endings.

It’s also a game packed with many pop culture references. From TV, from films, and from other video games. Delightful nods to puzzlers past and some very creepy moments I’d only seen on the silver screen suddenly brought to live in VR. I love it!

 

 

Button Pushing Simulator Now in VR!

If you’re familiar with the original 2D version, there are enough changes in the VR/3D version to make the game feel innovative and fresh. Endings are different and things have been added. For the whole part, it’s a game that works well in both 2D and 3D but as a big fan of virtual reality I think it works really, really well in this medium. For starters, you’re pushing buttons and toggling switches and this feels extra immersive in virtual reality. Want to pick something up? You can simply bend down in real life and pick it up and manipulate it in real life.

In terms of controls, it’s not perfect, but that’s to be expected for an early VR experience. My hands in the game didn’t always move to where I wanted them to be and I found it was often quite tricky to stretch over objects and reach things. For the best gameplay, you need a large space to play in at home so that you can move around freely. You can play this standing up or sitting down. It might be slightly more immersive (and easy on your legs) to sit down, but I played it largely standing up. If you don’t have a large space, you can stay rooted to one spot and use the in-game mechanic to teleport around fairly easily too. No motion sickness here!

 

 

Where are the Puzzles?

Like any good puzzle game the primary ‘puzzle’ is figuring out what to do. Then figuring out how to do it to get the output you want. For sure, there are plenty of ‘classic’ puzzle mechanics the escape room enthusiast will recognise, like Morse Code or binary inputs, but it’s largely a game of sequence memorizing and inputting a variety of data pieces into your console creatively. You might find a 4 digit code on one playthrough that you suddenly remember 10 playthroughs later and input it. You might spot a symbol which ends up being a map to guide you around a grid of buttons. There are a few ciphers, and some very fun uses of black-light, and so on and so on.

In short, I think it’s a fantastic game for the escape room enthusiast to play. It’ll push everything you know about solving escape rooms to the limit, and then some. A unique game that doesn’t quit fit into any category box, but definitely one I think you, dear reader, will enjoy. Puzzles a-plenty.

 

 

The Verdict

I really, really enjoyed playing Please, Don’t Touch Anything. It’s tongue in cheek humour was the perfect setting for a quirky little puzzle game like this. When writing about any VR game I like to consider whether such an experience would be possible in any other medium other than VR. There’s nothing in it that wouldn’t necessarily be possible in another medium – the example being that it’s also available as a non-VR title, but it’s so much better in VR.

I’d not hesitate to recommend this to any other escape room enthusiast and I think it’s got a rightful place in the Oculus catalogue as a game puzzle fans should definitely check out.

Please, Don’t Touch Anything can be purchased for Oculus Quest 2 on the Oculus store page here.

Ubisoft announce their latest VR escape room: Save Notre Dame on Fire

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If any of your local escape rooms or VR cafes offer “VR escape rooms”, there’s a chance you’ll have spotted a game or two by the video game developer, Ubisoft. Well known in our industry for creating the (fantastic) Beyond Medusa’s Gate, The Dagger of Time and Escape the Lost Pyramid, Ubisoft have a reputation for high quality, cinematic escape experiences set in the video game universe(s) of Assassin’s Creed and Prince of Persia. Which is why when they announced last month that their newest VR escape room experience was set in present day France, we were surprised! Surprised, but still excited.

 

Save Notre Dame on Fire

In 2019 the Notre Dame cathedral in the centre of Paris, France caught fire and was almost destroyed by the blaze that lasted 15 hours. In their latest adventure, Save Notre Dame on Fire, Ubisoft have created a virtual reality puzzle experience that puts players in the shoes of the first responders and firefighters who were sent to the scene to put out the flames and save the historic building.

The player’s mission (should they choose to accept it), is to venture into the building and recover the “crown of thorns”, an incredibly precious relic stored within.

Where previous games in the Ubisoft VR experience were based on video games, this one is based on the film “Notre-Dame On Fire” by Jean-Jacques Annaud. The experience is supported by first hand accounts of the firefighters on the scene, and experts on the building’s architecture, history, and the events that unfolded in 2019.

 

 

After extensively researching the Notre Dame’s structure in order to recreate the building in Assassin’s Creed Unity, the video game developer had been actively involved in the reconstruction effort. After hearing of this, the film’s director Jean-Jacques Annaud contacted Ubisoft with a proposal to use their vast library on Notre Dame to create a new kind of virtual reality experience.

In an interview, Ubisoft’s Senior Vice President Deborah Papiernik explained that the company made the choice to create the game as an escape room VR experience rather than an at-home VR experience as a move to bring the game to the general public. She explained,

“Home VR is still growing, and we wanted to do something for the larger public… The social aspect is central to the experience”.

This also ensures that players who don’t have at-home VR equipment can still head to their local escape room and experience the game.

On Ubisoft’s website, they indicate that part of the profits will be contributed to the Notre Dame’s reconstruction:

“Part of the benefits will be donated to the organization in charge or reconstructing Notre-Dame de Paris, giving everyone a chance to contribute to its rebirth.”

 

 

Solve Puzzles, Escape the Building

Save Notre Dame on Fire is a virtual reality experience for 2 – 4 players and will last up to 1 hour long. Unlike traditional escape rooms however, there’s no timer. No big clock looming over the team. Instead players will be forced to work fast on their feet as the building quite literally collapses around them. Players will not only solve puzzles to rescue the crown of thorns, but they’ll also need to work together to extinguish the flames and escape the building once they’ve recovered the precious relic.

Throughout the game payers will explore the choir with the altar, the transept, the gallery of Chimeras, and the bell tower. Players will be expected to climb, run, jump, toggle switches, and use everything they can find to navigate the space. In deciding where to send the players around the physical experience, Papiernik recounted a story of one of the firefighter’s experience. He had grabbed the crown of thorns where it was exhibited, made it out, and then the cathedral told them “That’s not the real one, that’s the copy”.

“The real [crown of thorns] was hidden in a safe, unknown to most people, and retrieving it proved to be a puzzle worthy of an escape game!”

 

 

Where to Play Save Notre Dame on Fire

Presently, it is the intention of Ubisoft that the new game, Save Notre Dame on Fire will be a game available at all existing escape room and VR venues that offer Ubisoft escape games. This roll out has begun with a few companies around the UK already offering the new game, including Chesterfield VR. We expect to see the name pop up at a lot more escape rooms around the company, and if in doubt you can check out the full list on Ubisoft’s website here.

10 BETTER KNOWN games to look out for in the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase!

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The ‘Cerebral Puzzle Showcase‘ is now live! It’s running from the 19th to 23rd May 2022 this showcase is full of demos, live streams, and even discounts for plenty of puzzle games that are designed to make you think! As such, here at The Escape Roomer we’ve been a little obsessed with how much fun we’re having playing all the games. A few days ago we highlighted some of the best upcoming games being launched (or with playable demos) in the showcase, and yesterday we dug around for 8 of our favourite hidden gems.

There are a huge amount of games being showcased (over 100!), but here are 10 games you’ve probably heard of – and not to be missed!

 

Get Coding

Human Resource Machine & 7 Billion Humans

Human Resource Machine: Program little office workers to solve puzzles. Be a good employee! The machines are coming… for your job. From the creators of World of Goo and Little Inferno.

7 Billion Humans: Automate swarms of office workers to solve puzzles inside your very own parallel computer made of people. A thrilling follow up to the award winning Human Resource Machine. Now with more humans!

Why we’re excited: Coding may not see fun, but HRM did a great job of getting many of us excited back in 2015! The follow up seemed to pass us by, so we’re excited to take the chance to catch up with this little world and dust off our algorithm skills again!

 

Explore a Mysterious World

 

Myst

Welcome to Myst: a starkly beautiful island, eerily tinged with mystery and shrouded in intrigue. Journey to Myst Island and other stunning, long dormant locations – called “Ages”- and begin to unravel the mystery you have been thrust into. As you learn what happened on the island, you will find that you are playing a key role in an epic story whose ending has not yet been written. Explore deeper connections in these stunning and surreal Ages, uncover a story of ruthless family betrayal, and make choices that will affect both you, and the world of Myst itself.

Why we’re excited: Myst is the OG mystery game from years ago (the clue is in the title) and even though Mairi couldn’t crack it, we can’t wait to return! The atmosphere is really what sells Myst – it’s quiet, with sparse sounds and virtually no writing. You come across little puzzles and vignettes, which you need to solve by exploring the island and figuring out what happened. It’s beautiful and unsettling and is a classic for a reason.

 

Obduction

The strange worlds of Obduction reveal their secrets only as you explore, discover, coax, and consider their clues. As you bask in the otherworldly beauty and explore the enigmatic landscapes, remember that the choices you make will have substantial consequences. This is your story now. Make it home.

Why we’re excited: This is a successor for Myth, but instead of a mysterious island you’re now on a mysterious planet. We love the fact Cyan have incorporated the Sci-Fi trend into the franchise!

Psychological Mysteries

 

Return of the Obra Dinn

In 1802, the merchant ship Obra Dinn set out from London for the Orient with over 200 tons of trade goods. Six months later it hadn’t met its rendezvous point at the Cape of Good Hope and was declared lost at sea. Early this morning of October 14th, 1807, the Obra Dinn drifted into port at Falmouth with damaged sails and no visible crew. As insurance investigator for the East India Company’s London Office, dispatch immediately to Falmouth, find means to board the ship, and prepare an assessment of damages. Return of the Obra Dinn is a first-person mystery adventure based on exploration and logical deduction.

Why we’re excited: While the art style may not look immediately exciting or appealing, and ‘logical deduction’ may not be everyone’s cup of tea, this game has so many rave reviews across social media and has amassed a cult following, including by our own Russ! The narrative has a hold on you and stays with players long past the game is done, so definitely set your expectations aside and give it a go!

 

Inscryption

Inscryption is an inky black card-based odyssey that blends the deckbuilding roguelike, escape-room style puzzles, and psychological horror into a blood-laced smoothie. Darker still are the secrets inscrybed upon the cards…

Why we’re excited: This is the only horror game in our lists, but as it literally mentions escape rooms in the description we couldn’t not feature it! We are intrigued about how this game will blend escape room puzzles with a deck builder, but from what we’ve seen of the game we can imagine it definitely has our attention!

Change the Game

 

Lightmatter

A first-person puzzler where shadows kill you. Watch your step or be swallowed by the darkness. Play Tunnel Vision Games’ love-letter to the genre. Use lateral thinking to solve mind-bending puzzles with lights, shadows, beams, platforms, and lightmatter.

Why we’re excited: Silence in the library anyone? This game is a great mix of sci-fi, puzzles and a tad of atmospheric pressure from the fear of darkness!

 

The Pedestrian

The Pedestrian is a 2.5D side scrolling puzzle platformer. You are The Pedestrian! Enter into a dynamic 3D world with stunning graphics and challenging puzzles. You play by rearranging and reconnecting public signs in order to explore and advance through each engaging environment.

Why we’re excited: We love the combination of platformer and puzzler, as well as both 2D and 3D elements! We also bet you’ll pay more attention to road signs after playing.

 

Gunpoint

Gunpoint is a stealth puzzle game that lets you rewire its levels to trick people. You play a freelance spy who takes jobs from his clients to break into high security buildings and steal sensitive data.

Why we’re excited: Back to the pixel art! This game looks like a great mix of stealth, action and puzzles, with quick levels and interesting mechanics.

 

Baba is You

Baba Is You is a puzzle game where the rules you have to follow are present as blocks you can interact with. By manipulating them, you can change how the game works, repurpose things you find in the levels and cause surprising interactions!

Why we’re excited: Baba is you. You are baba. Baba is a bunny. We love the fact you control your own abilities, and change the environment, by moving blocks to change the rules. Maybe baba is you one minute, but baba is me the next…

 

You can sign up for all the news about the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase this week by heading to the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase website. Check out this post to read our top 8 new releases of the showcase, and this post to see 8 hidden gems you’ve got to check out.

8 HIDDEN GEMS to look out for in the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase!

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Today is launch day of the much anticipated ‘Cerebral Puzzle Showcase‘! Here at The Escape Roomer, we absolutely love a good puzzle game, and this Steam showcase is absolutely packed with them. Running from the 19th to 23rd May this showcase is full of demos, live streams, and even discounts for plenty of games that are designed to make you think!

There are over 100 games in this year’s showcase (too many to list here). Yesterday we shared our top 8 puzzle games launching or being demo-ed for free. Today, here are 8 hidden gems we’re particularly excited for:

 

🐉 Dungeon Time

 

Dungeons and Puzzles

Dungeon and Puzzles is a dungeon adventure themed Sokoban game. The movement and direction are restricted, and the adventurer’s ability can be changed by equipment at hand. Think through every step, destroy every monster and find a way to the end of the dungeon where the treasure awaits.

Why we’re excited: We love a dungeon crawler, but the added puzzle aspect takes this to the next level! This game has what you’d expect of a dungeon games – dungeons, monsters, and weapons! However, you really have to think through your decisions based on the movement and abilities they grant.

Fidel Dungeon Rescue

A critically acclaimed roguelite where you can REWIND to find the optimal path through monsters, treasure and secrets. Quick to play. No grinding. No filler. Deep gameplay.

Why we’re excited: This is a dungeon crawler with less emphasis on the ‘crawling’ – instead of repeatedly dying, reloading, dying reloading…in ‘Dungeon Rescue’ the whole point is to rewind time and do it better, which is a great concept and very ‘Groundhog Day’! Also, you’re a dog. What could be better?

 

🖱️ Point and Click

Creaks

The ground starts shaking, light bulbs are breaking – and something rather unusual is happening right behind the walls of your very room. Equipped with nothing but wit and courage, you slowly descend into a world inhabited by avian folk and seemingly deadly furniture monsters.

Why we’re excited: From cute to creepy, this game is a quintessential point and click with a touch of unnerving!

 

🗝️ Playing with Rooms

Hiding Spot

A difficult puzzle game about isolating yourself. Build a safe place, huddle up and get cozy.

Why we’re excited: This is the introvert’s dream. This whole game asks you to rearrange the room to create a little hiding spot for yourself. Sounds simple right? It seems like there is a lot more to this game than it appears!

 

Moncage

Moncage is a unique puzzle adventure game where you explore a fascinating world trapped inside a mysterious cube. With each face displaying a unique scene, you’ll have to leverage the illusions and discover the hidden links to solve the puzzle.

Why we’re excited: Everything revolves around you… Revolving a cube, which sounds simple but the beautiful scenes within and how they interact with each other is bound to get your scratching your head pretty quickly!

 

🧩 Puzzle Time

 

Carto

Carto is a charming adventure game wrapped around a unique, world-altering puzzle mechanic. Use this power to explore mysterious lands, help a quirky cast of characters, and guide Carto on her journey back to her family.

Why we’re excited: We love the cute art style and story mixed with interesting puzzle and adventure elements!

 

Cosmic Express

Plan the train route for the universe’s most awkward space colony!

Why we’re excited: There’s something comforting about planning a train route, so let’s take that to space to make it even more fun!

 

Yugo puzzle

Yugo Puzzle is a minimalistic, challenging, and satisfying puzzle game. You move jelly blocks left and right to combine them with the same color. It may sound easy, but it can be challenging. Enjoy lots of mind-blowing moments.

Why we’re excited: Sometimes the most simple-looking games have the most interesting mechanics, and we’re looking forward to getting our head around this one!

 

You can sign up for all the news about the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase this week by heading to the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase website. Check out this post to read our top 8 new releases of the showcase, and keep an eye out for another up-coming post where we’ll be detailing some of the fan favourite games in the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase.

8 DEMOS & NEW RELEASES to play for free the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase!

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Here at The Escape Roomer we are often recommending various puzzle video games we’ve found, so you can imagine how excited we were when we heard about the upcoming ‘Cerebral Puzzle Showcase‘! Running from the 19th to 23rd May this showcase takes place on Stream and will be full of demos, live streams, and even discounts for plenty of puzzle games that are designed to make you think!

The showcase will feature over 100 puzzle games, so too many to list here. But we’ve searched through the list and picked out 8 extra special new releases and demos that escape room enthusiasts should look out for in the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase.

Unreleased Puzzle Games You Can Demo for Free

Escape Academy

 

Welcome to Escape Academy. Train to become the ultimate Escapist. Solve Puzzles. Hack Servers. Meet the Faculty. Brew the perfect cup of tea. Escape Rooms in single player or co-op with a friend – local or online!

Why we’re excited: This is an escape room as a video game… It should be obvious! The graphics and sets look fantastic, puzzles look intriguing and the ability to co-op both virtually and locally is really exciting!

 

Akurra

Explore ancient puzzle filled islands, meet strange new friends, and unlock epic secrets in an atmospheric world with a retro aesthetic. Experience a creative new take on a classic puzzle genre in the open world puzzle adventure Akurra!

Why we’re excited: The pixel art style is giving us Pokemon Blue vibes and the puzzles are giving Zelda temple vibes. This is taking us right back and we are here for it.

Paper trail

Paper Trail is a top-down puzzle adventure about leaving home, set in a paper world. You must fold and tear your way through a diverse, populated paper world. As you progress, new gameplay opportunities emerge, enhanced by the folding mechanics. Drag objects, shine lights, and push boulders across the paths you create through folding.

Why we’re excited: The puzzle mechanics intrigue us here, as well as the beautiful art style. We bet the story is going to take us on a journey too!

How to Say Goodbye

How to say goodbye is a narrative puzzle game inspired by illustrated books. Move the elements of décor and manipulate reality to help a group of ghosts wandering between two worlds reach the “other side”. But beware of the evil spirits that will try to keep you prisoner…

Why we’re excited: (At the risk of sounding repetitive) The puzzle mechanics seem very intriguing… From an eerie art style, you just know this title is going to be a beautiful and impactful story!

 

Storyteller

With Storyteller you are the one writing the stories! Start with a title, characters and settings and create your own twist on stories familiar and new.

Why we’re excited: The art style looks fun, and although the game play looks simple there are many many different iterations and stories you can create! It’s a recipe for replayability.

 

New Games Launching at the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase

 

Frequency Dissonance

You’ve been stationed on planet Omega for 24 years now, guarding, observing and maintaining the station. Finally, a signal is picked up by the radio. The empire calls. Your cooperation will decide fates.

Why we’re excited: Don’t let the simple art and mechanics deceive you – this game has 6 alternate endings and mysteries to uncover! We can’t wait!

 

We are definitely the baddies

 

The emperor is kicking you out of the planet. But that should worry an evil space overlord such as yourself. Build a huge factory, extract resources, fend off the locals, and escape with all you can grab before the deadline. Create a network of pipes and factories that are likely to be terrible for the environment but great for your pockets.

Why we’re excited: We love the pixelized art style, but intrigued about a game that timeboxes the gameplay to 1hr – just like an escape room!

Jelly is Sticky

Explore a world of colorful jelly blocks that can be deformed and stuck together. Use them in surprising, unexpected ways to build clever contraptions and solve delightful puzzles.

Why we’re excited: This one is more of a traditional puzzle game than others on this list, but it’s still full with lots of fun elements! Not only are you playing with jelly, contraptions and obstacles, but every jelly has a different property which you need to use to your advantage!

You can sign up for all the news about the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase this week by heading to the Cerebral Showcase website

Keep an eye out for our upcoming posts where we’ll be covering the best hidden gems, and more well-known games at the showcase.

Detective Mimo | Review

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Detective Mimo Review | There is a bright shining City hidden in the Kingdom of CAT called Shrimp, an amazing place with luxurious facilities such as Cat Beauty Salon, fish café and MEW Bank. Shrimp attracts thieves from whole country. The most mysterious and rich palace called MEW bank is the prime target. One day, a renowned thief proclaimed that he would invade the bank and loot all the gold. Shrimp needs detective Mimo, a policecat who has guarded the city bravely to stop the crime! After conquering obstacles and solving puzzles, Mimo finally met the thief, but, to her surprise, the thief told her another story that will change Mimo’s life forever.

Developer: Omescape
Date Played: May 7th 2022
Console: Mobile
Number of Players: 1
Time Taken: ~2 hours

When Detective Mimo first came out, I immediately downloaded it onto my phone.

That was around a year ago, and every single day I opened up my games folder (usually to play through the Rusty Lake series, or more recently the Escape Games with their adorable clay-motion style), the masked Cat Thief would be staring up at me egging me on to open up the game.

I knew that Detective Mimo would be one of those games that would become all-encompassing and all-consuming. I’d also heard on the grapevine that it required some outside the box mobile phone mechanics such as plugging your phone in to trigger an action, spinning and rotating the physical device and so on. A game like that couldn’t just be picked up and put down at will in a doctor’s waiting room. Nope, I wanted to sit down and give it my full and individed attention.

That day came on a Saturday morning spent cooped up at home as I waited for my occasional Player 2 to get ready to go out. I had a couple of hours and felt like immersing myself in a puzzle filled world of detectives… And cats!

 

 

Everyone’s Favourite Policecat, Detective Mimo

Detective Mimo is an impossibly brilliant game to try to explain. If I had to distill the essence of the experience down to just one sentence… I couldn’t. So here’s the long version:

Detective Mimo is a classic mobile point-and-click escape room adventure with some major twists. Players play as Detective Mimo herself, a cat detective on the case to track down and foil the mysterious Cat Thief’s plans to rob the city bank. If you’ve played any puzzle adventure games you’ll probably know the drill – look for items, solve puzzles, give items to characters, combine items, advance the game and so on and so on. But I’m not giving it the “Wow Award” for being extra innovative for this.

Nope, it’s what happens next that is the star of the show. Without going into too many spoilers, a point in the game comes when the player must start all over again. I suppose it’s not too much of a spoiler to admit since this is the part of the game the company’s marketing focuses on the most, for example, in the trailer. But rest assured that this 50% point is when things start to get really, really weird.

Fourth Wall?! What Fourth Wall?

The first part of the game is really just a precursor to the second part of the game, the point from which the fourth wall is broken and the whole essence of “what even is a game” and “what are we doing here” is cracked wide open. From this point, players find themselves dismantling the video game from the inside out, typing code, command strings, sneaking around hidden menus.

The game developers take full advantage of the medium too. The point-and-click style of gameplay becomes redundant at a point, this time you need to really think outside of the box and figure out what your mobile phone device can do. At times I was holding my phone in the weirdest angles, spinning it around on a table, rummaging around looking for my charger to plug it in, and even using the torch light on the back of it to help solve puzzles.

It was a brilliantly wild ride.

 

 

*Miow*

But it’s not all about the puzzles and the quirky gameplay, Detective Mimo is an all round solid game when it comes to the details too. From a lovely, hand-illustrated style of world complete with a whole host of feline characters, to a fun (and often very dramatic) sound track that had my partner asking several times what on Earth I was doing on my phone.

The narrative design is some of the best I’ve seen in any video game for a very long time, and with exciting character arcs condensed into such a short and snappy game, I was hooked from the very first second to the very last.

In fact, I only needed to take one break – at some point my partner was ready to go out and off we went and enjoyed a day of eating nice food and walking around – but the whole time I couldn’t shake that itch of wanting to get back home so I could find out what happened to Detective Mimo. Was she okay in my phone without me? Could I sneak a glance during a bathroom break? This game has that effect on you, and it’s powerful.

As a final note on this game’s extra-gameplay perks, there is a secret level which might just be my favourite puzzle sequence in any game ever. This to say, it’s worth investigating, if you can.

 

 

The Verdict

Detective Mimo, for all it’s charm, has shot up to my personal gold tier of “must play” escape room video games and I’m floored that it isn’t more popular and well known within this community. If you only download one more game on your mobile device ever, make sure it’s this one. My best advice? Don’t be like me and wait a whole 10 months from downloading it to actually playing it – carve out an hour or two and play it right away! I promise you.

With such an impressive game from the Omescape Games team, I just hope they’ll work on another one. A sequel perhaps? I’d love to see more from Detective Mimo and her nemeses. Or perhaps an alternate reality detective genre set in the canine kingdom instead?

Whatever it’ll be, I’m eagerly awaiting returning to the fantastically brilliant puzzle game worlds this company creates.

 

Detective Mimo can be played on all mobile devices. Head to the website to download it here.