Mystery Mansion Regina: Drag Task Force | Review

The devious Ruby Hymen has betrayed the Drag Task Force and has stolen all of their powers. The leader of the DTF, Flo Mingo, has selected you and your team to help the DTF infiltrate Ruby’s secret lair. You must find a way to stop Ruby and help the members of the DTF get their powers back!

Rating: Hilarious!
Completion Time: ~83 minutes
Date Played: 6th April 2021
Party Size: 4
Recommended For: 16+, a light-hearted laugh

This week I found out about the ‘comedy’ escape room DTF *pause* which stands for Drag Task Force, not whatever else you might be thinking. Excited to give it a go, I invited a new team of three of my closest ‘IRL’ friends*

* isn’t it funny how lockdown has now split all the people I know into ‘IRL’ (or people I knew before the lockdown) and online escape room friends… I.E. Most of the folks I play online escape rooms, who I’ve never even met in the real world!

…And we could not be more thrilled by how light-hearted, funny and unique the experience was!

The Story

The story is… Very silly! But heck, why not?! The world needs a little more humour. A self-styled ‘comedy’, the story goes that after a freak accident the five members of the Drag Task Force gain super-human powers. Abilities such as Super Seduction, or Super Strength! Woah! But one of their member (the devious Ruby Hymen) turns against them, and starts taking down the super Queens one by one.

Flo Mingo, the last left, sends her secret FloBot into Ruby’s dressing room to try to figure out what the plan is and give the Drag Task Force their powers back. This is where you come in, you’ve got to control the FloBot and guide her to success all the while solving the mysterious puzzles Ruby has left for you and avoiding the glitter bomb she’s rigged to explode in 60 minutes!

I can’t say I completely understood the plot, but I’m 99% sure we saved the day in the end. I was too busy laughing to pay complete attention, but it all ended well.

The Experience

Drag Task Force takes place in both Zoom and Telescape. Specifically, we started with a Telescape link and within that found our Zoom link to connect with our fabulous host Mitch. The experience itself starts in Telescape with a fun introduction video and only by solving a couple of preliminary puzzles could we then activate the Zoom portion of the experience.

From here, Telescape becomes your point and click 360* view of the room and inventory storage system, whereas Zoom is where the ‘real action’ happens: Controlling Flo Bot (don’t do as I did and accidentally call her Ruby – she won’t like that!!). By a series of voice commands, Flo Bot explores the room on your behalf, interacting with the environment and responding to your wishes (if you ask her nicely).

The cool thing about the Drag Task Force room is that it’s an online only room, which means it isn’t a real life escape room shoehorned into an online experience, it was designed to be online from the start. This means the creators can do some create things with it. The space is small – but just the right size for one person, for example. Secondly, another aspect of the game is that you can upgrade your Flo Bot as you go along. For example, we discovered an item that allowed her to use UV vision, or x-ray vision, or other technological leaps that a ‘real life’ team wouldn’t be able to do. Pretty cool, pretty cool!

The best part about the ‘experience’ by far has to be the host! We were hosted by Mitch and I’m still (days later) in awe as to how he managed to run the room without laughing or breaking character once. It’s great acting and they really brought the whole thing together.

The Puzzles

In terms of puzzles, I found DTF ever so slightly harder than expected! Of all the reviews I read before we played, a few of them mentioned needing extra time (which to be fair, we did also! We overran by 8 minutes to be exact), and a further few mentioned the puzzles being easy enough, but there are a lot of them!

I think both cases are correct! It’s good to know that the time limit has actually been increased from the original 60 minutes to 75, and never fear – if you do run out of time Flo Bot has a very handy secret ability… She can hack the glitter bomb from exploding in your face, giving you a little extra time.

Players can expect to encounter a good mix of puzzles. A few puzzles centre around finding a code to unlock a lock, or a key for a padlock – but many more are multi-step and require a great deal of logic to decipher. You’ll need to think outside of the box… And when I say that I REALLY mean it. This is the second escape room I’ve encountered that involves singing – but no spoilers on exactly what this means. You’ll just have to go play it yourself to find out!

Another thing to mention is that some of the main ‘puzzles’ also involve you- or more specifically, how you interact with FloBot. FloBot can do a lot of awesome things but only if you figure out how to correctly address her. It’s a nice human touch, rather than a mag lock or a key, you’ve got to solve it by saying the ‘right thing’.

We used (if memory serves correctly) 2 or 3 hints on a few of the puzzles, and one puzzle involving seduction we solved in record time. *hair flick* what can I say, we’re just so seductive.

Other, Cool Stuff

I couldn’t finish a review of DTF without mentioning a couple of interesting, extra cool things about the game that don’t quite fit into the headings above:

• A percentage of your ticket cost is donated to a local LGBTQ+ charity, Lulu’s Lodge. What’s more, Mystery Mansion Regina often run hosted events featuring the fantastic Flo Mingo herself.
• All of the drag artists in the game are real life, local artists. They’ve also all got excellent names.
• There’s a LOT of adult humour, but the game is advised for players 14+ – I reckon (and this is just an assumption) that the host can dial the innuendo up or dial it down depending on the audience.

Overall, a brilliant experience and a fun way to spend an evening with friends. I’d recommend this one for anyone up for a laugh, and for such a good cause, why the heck not?!

DTF can be booked for $25 CAD per person on Mystery Mansion Regina’s website. A portion of your ticket cost is donated to Lulu’s Lodge, a local LGBTQ+ charity.

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