Come back aboard The Warp Core and head even further back in time on your hunt for more historical items to add to your collection. This time, visit the Dungeons of Camelock as you try to track down King Arthur’s legendary sword: Exkeylibur. You’ll need to breakout of your cell before battling your way back to the portal for a safe return.
Rating: Awesome!
Completion Time: 31:54
Date Played: 21st March 2021
Party Size: 4
Recommended For: Everyone!
Stop the press! This is my inaugural entry into what’ll hopefully be a weekly thing for me – The Escape Game Olympics! Seriously, how am I THIS FAR into lockdown and I’m only just doing this now? It was brilliant.
International Online Escape Game Tournament
The tournament, sometimes known as the Escape Game Olympics and other times known as the International Online Escape Game Tournament is a weekly event every Sunday from 7pm hosted by escaperoomers.de. Each week at least 40 teams from around the world take on the escape play at home escape game in a race to get on top of the leader board and win a coveted medal for your country.
Team Escaping the Closet
I joined the fantastic Escaping the Closet team comprised of Alice, Ash, and Tasha who have regularly competed in the EGO since week 1, and this week’s escape room challenge was The Warp Core Part 2!
The Warp Core Part 2
The Warp Core Part 2 is… You guessed it, the second part in The Warp Core series. Since I haven’t played Part 1, I’m a little bit ‘behind’ in the overarching plot, but no worries – it was very easy to pick up as a standalone mission too! What was most interesting about this game though was it’s seamless mix of sci-fi and history.
Essentially, you start in a time machine and spend the first part of the experience powering it up. Then a portal opens up transporting you all the back to ancient Camelot- sorry, CameLOCK to retrieve the legendary ExKEYlibur sword. This game gets away with a lot: sci-fi puzzles perfectly segmented between old timey puzzles. At one point we piloted a drone around the room scanning areas. At another point, we shot arrows around a medieval dungeon and engaged in some casual sword play with the guardian of the sword. It’s eclectic but it WORKS.
As well as the setting being unusual, the technology was also particularly noteworthy! The whole experience takes place in Telescape – if you’re new to the escape room industry, this means it’s a point and click 3D model of the room, with question marks over items of interest. You can see where each other player is ‘in the room’ and what they’re looking at, and helpfully you also have an inventory system.
The Warp Core is built in telescape, but the creators take this further with some really unique extras in the game. Unlike 99% of digital Telescape escape rooms, which are just normal rooms converted to online, this one has been BUILT FOR Telescape. It makes excellent use of the technology in surprising ways that simply wouldn’t work in real life. For example, fighting a person (would an actor just jump into a room and start attacking you with a sword – how would this work in real life?), piloting a drone (which would probably break irl), or using a knife to hack through something in a room (knives, yeah thats a no from me).
Cool tech aside, the puzzles overall were really fun! Zero hints were used throughout the game, and nothing stumped us for too long. The team of 4 we had was also about the ‘right’ amount of people so that we all kept busy. I generally prefer games that err on the side of non-linear, meaning puzzles can be solved simultaneously.
Due to the competitive nature of the EGO, we raced through this game in a record 31 minutes. Okay maybe not quite a record, but our team came 7th out of 41 teams, so I’m pretty damn chuffed about this! Both the The Warp Core and the Escape Game Olympics were an absolute joy and I’m looking forward to seeing what next week’s tournament game will be!
The Warp Core Part 2 can be booked for £15 on ClueHQ’s website here.
[…] LOT of fun playing a new escape room game every week, and I was super thrilled after the success of The Warp Core Part II to see Part II in the roster. ClueHQ have really outdone themselves with this series, each game so […]