Online Escape Rooms Ireland: The Beach Bar Digital | Review

You have finally been offered the job of your dreams, and you celebrate by taking the ultimate tropical holiday before you begin your new job.  But on the last night of your vacation you celebrate a little bit TOO much, and you have lost your passport somewhere at the beach bar.  You have one hour to find your passport or you will miss your return flight and loose your new job!

Rating: Made with Heart!
Completion Time: 53 minutes
Date Played: 4th February 2021
Party Size: 2
Recommended For: People missing escape rooms in lockdown!

The digital version of The Beach Bar is the latest venture by escape room company Online Escape Rooms Ireland and their concept is quite innovative! From a real life escape room, they’ve adapted into a guided experience with a host, and now have unveiled a purely digital version of the experience with Telescape!

It’s really interesting seeing how the idea of an escape room has evolved during the pandemic and WOW, I guess it’s officially 12 months into lockdown (for me anyway!) and pointing and clicking around an escape room in my browser has become – dare I say it – quite a regular occurrence! I quote my friend Jamie:

But I do applaud Online Escape Room Ireland for giving Telescape a shot and the experience works! If you can’t afford the hosted experience, for a fraction of the price you can still explore the room in your own time. After all, from activation your link stays active for 72 hours in case a puzzle really stumps you and you decide to sleep on it.

So the story goes you’ve just finished this incredible, beautiful holiday but on the last night you hit the beach bar. After some heavy drinking you awake to find you have LOST YOUR PASSPORT WHAT?! There’s nothing for it, back to the bar in a hazy hangover to retrace your steps and find that passport. This is where it gets a little bizarre – and I say that with a big smile on my face! For some reason the bar is packed with puzzles.

Having worked as a bartender I know very well that at the end of a shift I can’t think of anything I’d like to do less than come up with intricate puzzles to ‘safekeep’ lost property. Nah we just chucked lost property in the boss’s office and went home. BUT, you, dear player, do not remember what happened the night before. Who knows what you got up to – you remember nothing! Hah.

By pointing and clicking you may rummage through pretty much everything in the bar. Discarded jackets? You can rummage! Drawers? You can rummage. The best part is that when you successfully find an object, or enter a code, you’re presented with a short video of the action being performed. If I choose to dial a number on the phone, I get to watch my own hands poking the buttons. A really nice touch that made the room feel more ‘lived in’.

Now there is a little bit of dissonance between how the experience is meant to be played and how it is played – but I think this is very likely to happen in this medium. Translating a real escape room to a digital format is a really, really tricky feat. For that I’m very forgiving! I love that the digital version is so accessible, but for sure the experience would have been better hosted or better yet, there in person.

In particular, inputting codes is a little bit tricky! Each item is labelled and you must input that item’s name followed by a code, or followed by another item to ‘activate it’. For example SPOON and BOWL would activate the spoon doing something to the bowl (just an example! There aren’t any spoons or bowls in the game), or SAFE and 1234 would input that code into the safe. Simple, but some of the puzzles are slightly trickier than that and may catch up beginners.

I played this around one device with my Player 2 and overall we had a good time! We got into the mood, put on some Hawaiian music and tried to picture ourselves in sunny paradise – not rainy London. There’s just something about “Lime in the Coconut” that always brightens the day!

Overall, a nice game that’s got a lot of heart. The owners put a lot of time and effort into this and it’s a lovely theme. I just can’t wait till we can do in-person games again soon! Pretty please universe!

The Beach Bar can be booked for €20.00 per game (1-6 players) over on Online Escape Rooms Ireland‘s website.

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