Emergency Exit: Exorcist (Digital) | Review

The ancient legend has it that anyone who stays longer than 1 hour in this haunted house simply disappears! Follow the footsteps of a world leading demonologist to uncover the secrets of this spooky house and exorcise the demons. Do NOT outstay your welcome.

Rating: Spooky
Completion Time: 45 minutes
Date Played: 29th March 2021
Party Size: 4
Recommended For: For a spooky, play any time awarding winning adventure

Before the Escape Game Olympics took a break for the summer, their penultimate game was Emergency Exit’s award winning Exorcist… And what a game to usher in the summer months with! We ranked a very respectable 5th place, which is not bad for a team of newbies! I’ll take it! 🎉

Recently converted from the remote avatar version, Exorcist’s point-and-click version utilises Telescape for a 360 view of the room and easy to follow inventory management system. I did go into the game apprehensive, I mean just how scary can a non-hosted game really be? It turns out, quite scary indeed!

Exorcist is the first in a two part horror series that centres around the mysterious Crowley Manor. Despite it being the first in the series, if you’ve been following The Escape Roomer you might have noticed we’ve already played the remote avatar sequel, The Beast. Oops! But honestly, despite seeing the conclusion first, neither ruined the surprises of the other and both games were a spectacularly spooky homage to the local history.

I did prefer The Beast to Exorcist, but I think this has a lot to do with the order we played them and the fact we went hosted for the former but point and click for the latter, and not truly representative of which is a better game. Because there’s not a lot in it – both games are brilliant.

Once upon a time…

So how did we come to find ourselves inside the mysterious Crowley Manor? You sign up for a haunted house ghost tour, of course! As we’re living in *gestures vaguely* a global panini (joke intended), you can’t join your tour guide for the actual experience but instead you get to remotely guide him via a digital interface. Legend has it anyone who stays longer than an hour will suffer a fate worse than death.

But that’s just a legend… Right?

The most recent spooky tale from the manor surrounds a priest from the Vatican going missing. The original resident of the Crowley Manor was a notorious Satanist, so this whole building needed a bit of cleansing TLC, but alas! The demonic entities won. But not before the priest has left a trail of breadcrumbs you’ll quickly follow if you intend to get to the bottom of the mystery.

*shudders*

Let’s set the scene

Exorcist is a remote version of the physical escape room you could play pre-pandemic at Emergency Exit… Well, sort of! It’s modified for a digital audience, but the space your host explores is the same. The same creepy abandoned furniture, strange dark liquids oozing, and blood splattered where blood should not be.

Exorcist is themed perfectly. It puts you on edge from start to finish – from antiques that have seen better days, to candles curiously arranged on the table, flicking and casting shadows that any demons could be lurking in. One big benefit to having Telescape’s 360 view is being able to explore the environment at your own pace and fully appreciate the set the creators have designed.

Point & Click vs Remote Avatar

So this is probably the main reason you’re reading this review and not one of the countless others out there. We played the point-and-click version, and you may be wondering how it compares. I’ve broken down my thoughts in an objective way to help you make an informed decision about which version you should book:

Point and Click

• ✅ If you have a lot of players to wrangle and can’t decide on a time slot together, point and click is great as you can play at any time.
• ✅ Point and click is a lot cheaper, at £21 per team.
• ❌ Point and click is less atmospheric, and easier to mentally ‘switch off’ during the gameplay and miss jump scares or spooky details.
• ✅ You could play solo if you wanted to.
• ❌ We experienced some technical errors in the point and click version which would not have happened in the remote avatar version.

Remote Avatar

• ✅ The hosted version is a cinematic experience guided by a very immersive actor. You’ll see only what the guide wants you to see at each important part of the story.
• ❌ Remote avatar is more expensive at £80 per team **
  ** Please note, I still consider this to be a very good price for the experience you’re getting.
• ❌ You have to have a team to play, this wouldn’t work well solo.
• ✅ The remote avatar version of the game is the version that has won all of the awards. The point and click has not.
• ✅ The remote avatar version of the game very special, and unique on the market. The point and click felt less unique.

Brilliant customer support

As a final note to this review, we were one of the first teams to play Exorcist as a point and click but our experience wasn’t without a few technical issues. Officially according to the Escape Game Olympics our completion time was 45 minutes, but this does not include 30 minutes spent stuck on a puzzle which didn’t (yet) work correctly digitally.

It was late on a Saturday night and yet we were immediately able to get a response from the Emergency Exit team who were brilliant in helping us out, triggering the next puzzle sequence and fixing the issue for future players right there and then. I’m seriously impressed! From both my interactions with the Emergency Exit, it’s super clear they care a lot about customer support. Double thumbs up all round.

The Verdict?

Exorcist is a great game. Sure, I do regret not playing it as a live avatar, or in-person escape room, but I’m really happy we did get to play it at all. It completely lives up to it’s accolades and evokes such a cinematic feeling of tension and spookiness, months later I’m still utterly spooked out every time I remember Crowley Manor.

The Exorcist Point & Click can be booked on Emergency Exit’s website here.