Tag Archives: Innovation ⭐⭐⭐

The Blue Coconut: Echoes of Stardust | Review

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Echoes of Stardust Review | Dance your way into the vibrant world of the “The Stardust Palace”, where groovy tunes and hidden mysteries await! Are you ready to immerse yourself in an adventure that will transport you back to the neon-lit heart of the 1980s disco era? Prepare to solve enigmatic puzzles, decipher cryptic clues, and unravel secrets from the golden age of disco!

Number of Players: 4
Time Taken: 40 minutes
Date Played: October 2023
Difficulty: Easy

Recently I travelled down to Sheffield to hang out with Al, Ash, and our friend Tasha (collectively, and separately of Escaping the Closet) which meant a weekend of escape rooms and tabletop puzzle games! Of course, it would also be that weekend I’d forgotten to bring the bag packed chock full of board games – so imagine my delight when I unzipped my small backpack to find I’d slipped one (just one) game in there. This one! Praise be to envelope sized light-weight puzzle games that are also printable just in case you forget your files at home.

I also packed The Blue Coconut’s other game, the spooky “Curse of Blackthorn Manor“. But on glancing through both of them, we collectively decided to leap into the light-hearted disco themed romp complete with dazzling font and bright and exciting colours.

 

Echoes of Stardust Review

Image (c) The Blue Coconut

 

The Blue Coconut themselves are prolific Etsy sellers sporting, at the time of writing, some 3,500 sales all around the world and a 5 star rating across the board. Some portion of their sales seem to come from a previous version of the business from 2015/2016 where the duo specialised in art prints. But then in 2021, The Blue Coconut was born (or reborn) as a tabletop puzzle game creator. Since then, they’ve been making anything from murder mystery games to more traditional puzzle games to popular response. In fact today, if you log into Etsy and search “escape room” you’ll probably see them pop up in one of the very first listings. Outside of Etsy, the team is slightly less known – which is a shame, because having played through two of their games now, I had fun!

But let’s get into it… What sort of fun can a player expect from Echoes of Stardust?

 

About Echoes of Stardust

Echoes of Stardust is a short puzzle and murder mystery hybrid game. You, the player arrives at The Stardust Palace after receiving a letter from “Vincent Groovemaster”, the venue’s owner. The star of the show, Celeste Nightingale was found murdered, and we had three missions to complete:

  1. Find the identity of Celeste’s killer
  2. Discover the location of Celeste’s cryptex
  3. Decipher the code to the cryptex to find out what she’d left within it

To solve those three missions, you’re faced with a range of puzzles. This is very much a “tip the contents of the envelope onto the table and explore” type of game, so there wasn’t too much in the way of signposting – we could tackle any puzzle in any order.

A few of them we got super easily. Of those, we picked up the killer’s name right away, for example. A few others required a little cutting and sticking – in one instance a jigsaws-style puzzle, and in another assembling a CD cassette case (so retro! I love it!). Since there were 4 of us, we split across the table into 2 groups of 2 and got solving, occasionally swapping clues when we got stuck on something in particular.

Guiding you along the way is a small business-card with images of which aspects of the game need to be used together to solve a puzzle. If we needed a hint, there was an online web portal we could go to to find out more. In the end, we used on hint on what I think is the very last puzzle in the game. It was a classic case of “we were overthinking this”, but a little extra signposting on this puzzle may have gone a long way.

 

The Physical Papers from The Stardust Palace

 

In terms of quality, Echoes of Stardust is available in two forms:

  • Print at Home
  • Shipped in an Envelope

We opted for the former, and ours arrived in a cute pink envelope inside a more stable cardboard envelope to protect it during transit. Since the game is essentially a printable game, everything in the envelope was a simple paper puzzle, with the occasional item on more durable stock including a metallic scratch-off solution reveal, and a shiny brochure stock.

 

 

Visually this game is beautiful… Well, at least until closer inspection when I realised that the majority of the eye-catching art is actually AI generated. Here at The Escape Roomer we are not huge fans of AI art. We get that there’s often a need to iterate on a design very quickly at the prototype level, but seeing AI art in a finished project is a big no no for us and we, at The Escape Roomer prefer to support human designers and human artists who have been fairly paid for their work.

With that elephant in the room out of the way, we can go back to the fun part. What is our verdict?

Echoes of Stardust: The Verdict

Well, Echoes of Stardust is very much a more entry-level escape room experience, and as a result isn’t targeting the enthusiast market. The team has chosen a formula (word answer, then digits for all other puzzles) and stuck to it across their games that I can see. Forcing puzzles into the box of “the output has to be a 3 digit code” or “a 4 digit code” doesn’t always make for the most interesting puzzles. I think the game could have done more with the theme, or been more – perhaps with a more cohesive storyline, or more unique puzzles. Personally, I would love to see the team do something that breaks their own formula. A bigger, more encompassing murder mystery which creative and mimetic puzzles that fit well into the universe they have created. Rather than a puzzle arbitrarily outputting a 3-digit code, perhaps you’re retracing the victim’s steps, or comparing fingerprints to suspects, or listening to music that contains backwards speaking in a creepy final message the victim left us – just the little things that make more ‘mimetic’ sense in the universe of ‘solving a murder’.

But all that said, for the low price and fun visual presentation, Echoes of Stardust hits the spot and ticks enough boxes for us to be called fun… And 3500 five star reviews on Etsy can’t be wrong. They’re clearly doing something right, that their target audience loves!

I would recommend this for the casual puzzle player looking for something fun on date night, or a game at home with friends. For an even better experience – you could probably use actual digit locks and a cryptex (if you have such things lying around your house – unfortunately I do, haha!) to lock away fun disco-themed prizes that are revealed once you solve the puzzles.

 

Echoes of Stardust can be purchased as a printable game, or shipped directly to you by heading to The Blue Coconut’s Etsy here.

Please Note: We were not charged for our experience, but this hasn’t affected our review.

 

Bowness Escape Room: Down to the Wire | Review

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Down to the Wire Review | Being in Russia undercover for the government isn’t easy at the best of times. Especially during the Cold War. Even more especially when someone has tipped off Russian intelligence about you….and they aren’t very happy. Wanting to destroy your work; and everything attached to it. You have one hour to save yourselves, and all your secret findings. The Countdown is on. Tick tock.

Date Played: 24th August 2023
Time Taken: 40 minutes
Number of Players: 2
Difficulty: Medium

 

 

Whenever I go on holiday, wherever it is in the world, I look and see if there are any local escape rooms. For a sunny week in August my family had booked a trip up from London to the Lake District, and being just an hour away in Edinburgh I thought I’d come along to escape the Edinburgh Fringe. There’s something so lovely about taking a week away to work in little cottage in the middle of absolutely nowhere, miles from the nearest tiny town. So what I wasn’t expecting to find was… An escape room!

I’ll be super honest. I almost didn’t book the room. The bus to get there would take an hour from where we were staying, and it only ran 5 times a day (so if we missed it we’d be screwed). To make matters worse, whichever bus we took we’d be arriving into Bowness 5 minutes after our room was meant to start. On top of that I made the mistake (or enthusiast judgement) of looking up other enthusiast reviews before. Other enthusiast reviews were… Not great. One reviewer said it was one of their least favourite rooms in the UK. Sheesh. That bad? So I chewed up whether I’d book it or not over the whole week. Until, on the very last day of the trip, I thought “What the heck, when else will I ever be in Bowness?! Lets just do it.” Besides, I only ever book good rooms, and I kinda wanted to see what a not-good room might be.

But on that front, I was disappointed. You know why? The room (or the company) wasn’t bad at all. Not in the slightest! It was lovely. Welcoming, super accommodating, and the room was the perfect example of making a fun, light-hearted experience on a small local budget. If asked, I’d probably even recommend it. But let’s get into all the specifics.

What to Expect at Bowness Escape Rooms

Bowness Escape Rooms is located in the heart of Bowness, just a short walk from most of the town’s bus stations. If you’re in town for a walking holiday, plenty of bus routes go through Bowness, so it’s a fairly conveniently location for the Lake District. On the other hand, if you live in the area then – oh my god you’re so lucky it’s so pretty – you may already know all about Bowness Escape Room and how to get there. Either way, despite my earlier bus complaint, it’s a convenient location.

The entrance is located on Lake Road (not Quarry Rigg, as Google Maps indicates), and is a part of a little stretch of cute shops and cafes. At this site, they run two rooms:

  • Cutting Room
  • Down to the Wire

We only had time for one, so we picked the less scary Down to the Wire, though it is worth noting that Cutting Room can be made less spooky if you want.

In our case we were running late, but the team were super responsive via Facebook and gave our GM a heads up that we’d be running a little late. It seems like they have bookings comfortably spaced apart and so despite showing up a whole 15 minutes late, we didn’t feel at all rushed.

Our Games Master was the enthusiastic Raphael (or Raffi for short) – please excuse spelling! Raffi greeted us at the door and had us wait in the waiting room with a couple of ingenious puzzles to play around with. Then came the usual briefing (no force, nothing high up, don’t poke the plug sockets, and so on), before we were transported back into the Cold War and off to a flying start.

 

 

Down to the Wire

Down to the Wire begins with you, the players, contained in a separate space from the main room. It’s a classic ‘escape into the room’ beginning, where everything you’ll need to use is tantalisingly just out of reach, and you need to figure out how to break into the main game area. Here, we were greeted with a few linear puzzles. Solve one, gain access to the second, and so on. Now, I’m a complete sucker for something slightly gimmicky that tests your skill level rather than puzzle solving level – but I know these aren’t always the most popular. There’s something that happens in this first room which we found brilliantly fun, but we definitely were lucky with our skill.

After only a little bit of faffing, we finally escaped ‘into’ the main room, and from there the game was truly afoot. With the theme being the Cold War, our central goal was to deactivate a bomb that stood in one corner ticking away in the background. There were a number of things we needed to do before we could get to the bomb. A number of locked boxes, some padlocks, and a tantalising class case in one corner with plenty of puzzles inside it.

We managed to ‘beat’ the bomb in around 40 minutes. There were a few notable places we could have shaved some time off, but besides trying to make up for showing up 15 minutes late, we weren’t especially in a hurry.

Overall, the puzzles felt fun. The entire room is linear, meaning it’s less practical for a larger team, especially where a few puzzles can really only be solved by one or two people at the time. There were also one or two where the solution was in fact something much more obvious than we thought, where we’d spend a while trying to ‘solve’ a puzzle when the solution was staring us in the face. Similarly, a few maths puzzles where the real answer wasn’t the complicated thing we were trying to do. But overall, they clicked with us. I can see how some groups – especially enthusiasts – might be frustrated with some elements of the room, and so maybe I wouldn’t recommend it to a super, super enthusiast, but for our little two player team it clicked well.

In terms of decor, this room is painted a sleek Cold-War military green and white. It looks mostly like a scientist’s office, with books on the table and test tubes and microscopes dotted around. Similarly, there’s a little Cold War bleakness. It’s furnished fairly sparsely and most of the puzzles or locked boxes you need are on display around you. That’s not to say there weren’t a few surprise reveals – there were, such as a keycard being swiped in just the right place to trigger a secret door… But generally speaking we knew where each ‘secret door’ was hiding from a carefully concealed wire behind tape, or a slightly fraying design that had definitely been handled a lot. All that to say, not a bad thing, just a thing. It felt on the low budget side, but what it lacked in fancy decor it made up for in enthusiasm and love.

 

 

The Verdict

We enjoyed Down to the Wire! It was an unexpected bonus onto a non-escape room holiday. It wasn’t a perfect room, but for a little hidden treasure found deep into the countryside, we were greeted cheerily and enthusiastically, and found in the room a lot of love and a few clever puzzles along the way. It’s not going to wow enthusiasts, and it’s best not to go in with super high expectations, but for us it was the perfect way to spend a morning. I’d recommend it for anyone in the area who wants a fun challenge!

 

Down to the Wire is one of two escape rooms that can be played at Bowness Escape rooms in the Lake District. You can book it here.

BreakInBox: Blue & Black | Review

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BreakInBox Review | Three locked boxes one inside the other. Breakinbox Challenges weave together versatile knowledge worlds making the solution a complex unique experience. 

Date Played: July 2023
Number of Players: 3
Time Taken: ~20 – ~60 minutes
Difficulty: Easy-Medium

I always get extra excited when I received puzzle games from far flung countries around the world, and Israel is a new one for me… Well, I’ve played a digital game or two from there – but never a physical one. How exciting! So when not one but two boxes from BreakInBox showed up, I couldn’t wait to get my regular group of puzzlers over to try something a little different.

BreakInBox is a company who specialises in perhaps the ‘purest’ form of tabletop puzzle games. They are quite literally locked boxes. Yep, you read that right. A cube with a padlock. Inside that locked cube is another cube with another padlock. You’ll never guess what’s inside that one: Another cube… With another padlock! In this way, you progress through a Matryoshka Doll- style experience, unlocking three layers of unique puzzles. Whilst each layer is locked with a padlock, the puzzles themselves are found printed on all the sides of each box. In this way, you’re encouraged to pick up and manipulate the boxes in your hands – turning them over and examining each one closely.

We played through two of the games available:

  • The Blue Box
  • The Black Box

As such, we’ll be writing about both in this review. There are some generalisations between the two, and there were some major differences. For example one of the boxes had more linear puzzles – one meant to be completed after another. The other on the other hand had much standalone puzzles that the three of us could tackle simultaneously. Similarly, one of them involved a unique sound puzzle – and the other had you send an email, which was exciting.

When the website explained the difficulty levels – they weren’t wrong. Blue is meant to be much easier, for beginner puzzlers, and black is meant to be a real head-scratcher. And yep, that’s absolutely right. We breezed through blue in around 20 minutes. Black on the other hand took all three of our collective brain power working together (and a clue or two) to crack the codes!

So, without further adieu, lets get into it:

 

 

The Blue Box

We played ‘The Blue Box’ over an evening and a couple of beers. It was sandwiched between a few other puzzle games, and it provided a very welcome break with some lighter, intuitive puzzling. In all, the Blue Box took us around 20 minutes. We think it would take the average puzzler around 30 minutes – but as mentioned, we erred on the side of “working simultaneously on all puzzles” where we could.

As such, it definitely felt more entry-level, but in a satisfying way with some particularly creative puzzles I always enjoy seeing in tabletop games like this.

The puzzles required the use of the internet. In particular, this box asks you to send an email in order to receive your next step digitally. In another way, the game also required the internet as there’s some pretty niche trivia knowledge needed – but thankfully there’s no rule against not Googling things. Unless you’re an absolute pub quiz boffin, it’s good to have your phone nearby to check some obscure detail or two.

 

 

The Black Box

We were so confident after playing the Blue Box we were all like “ahaha, this’ll be a breeze”. Oh how wrong we were. The creator, Avi, wasn’t wrong when he said to play the Black Box second because it’s significantly harder. But with the added difficulty, came the added fun. Of the two, we really, really enjoyed the second one. Each puzzle felt like a real mental workout.

In particular, I really enjoyed this game’s use of the internet. There was a fun sound-puzzle, and several puzzles which required us to absolutely scour Google Maps for very hard to find details! There was a nod to the UK we found particularly charming. But in general, it was the fact this box had so many satisfying ‘aha moments’ that scratched the itch of the kind of puzzles we love playing. As a team of three, we find ourselves taking part in a lot of online puzzle hunts, and this felt like a self-contained version of one of those – and well clued at that too.

 

 

Both Boxes

In both experiences, there isn’t so much of a “story”, other than “here’s a mysterious box, good luck”. As such, even the puzzles felt “pure” in a way I can’t quite describe in any other way. They’re like puzzle-hunt puzzles – the best versions of themselves, without being held back with the need to fit into context. For me, the puzzles were the best thing about both experiences, and I almost think there’s a certain charm to the fact they haven’t gone for story-heavy. There’s no right or wrong answer, but since The Escape Roomer always consider the story and narrative, it has to be mentioned.

In terms of quality, BreakInBoxes are simply made – with the most ‘high tech’ things being the user interface on the internet, and the three-digit locks that close the boxes. Otherwise these boxes are light-weight, and simply built, with simple graphics and colours. They’ve taken the phrase “Less is More” to heart, but in a way that feels true to their brand.

In both experiences, we also received a little bonus treat at the heart of the three boxes – the less I say about this the better! But it was super fun finally getting through to the ‘finish line’ and finding something fun waiting there. In this way, I think BreakInBox has a unique edge in the market in that it’s fully resettable and replayable – but better than that, because if you planned to gift this on to someone else you could put whatever you want inside the box. You could fill it with sweets, or a prize, or even a birthday gift..! Cute!

Last but not least, in terms of value, this one is a little harder to quantify. It’s another thing we always consider at The Escape Roomer. BreakInBox is based in Israel, but they have a shop listed in USD for international customers. Each box is around $35 USD, so about £30. Shipping comes in at $13.80, making the whole cost of a single box just under £40. Now, this is a little steep – but given the *gestures vaguely at the world* current cost of living crisis, it tracks about “what these things just cost these days”. We had a lot of fun with the two boxes we played. But did we have £40 x 2 fun? Well, I’m not sure… Maybe? Perhaps?

 

 

The Verdict

The verdict? We did have a lot of fun playing this one. The Black Box slightly more than the Blue Box, but there isn’t too much difference in it – both games are good for their respective audiences, and I commend the designers for creating such an experience like this. It’s probably slightly more expensive compared to a few other comparable games, but the puzzles are delightful and unique in their application, so I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it. In particular, the Blue Box would be great for a younger / less experienced audience. The Black Box is for more hardcore puzzlers who want a real challenge! I haven’t yet played the others in the series, but I imagine they’re well placed on the scale between these two.

 

The BreakInBox set can be purchased by heading directly to BreakInBox’s website here. The Escape Roomer readers may also use the code: TheER23 to receive $5 off their order.

We were not charged for our games, but this does not affect the content of our review.

Escape Edinburgh: The Magic Emporium | Review

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The Magic Emporium: Three days ago a well renowned supplies shop for all budding wizards closed for the day. However inexplicably the shop never opened again. Sensing that forces of evil are at work you have decided that you are going to investigate the mystery behind Ms Garbo’s disappearance. Don’t get caught!

Date Played: December 2022
Time Taken: 35 minutes
Number of Players: 3
Difficulty: Easy

 

“I’ve never done an escape room before”, my friend tells me.

“Wait, what?! Let’s fix that right away!”

Unfortunately by now I have done most of the absolutely excellent rooms in Edinburgh, so my choices to take a brand new non-enthusiast somewhere impressive were slim – but you can’t go wrong with somewhere like “Escape Edinburgh” which is a franchise with venues all around the UK. Back in London, I’d enjoyed a lot of their rooms and being a franchise model of company I figured they’d be pretty good in any city you came across. We’re fans of the ‘magical world’ theme, so The Magic Emporium in Edinburgh (one not available in London) seemed like a good bet to try out.

On a wintery day just after Christmas we took ourselves down to Escape Edinburgh to try out the magical shop themed room as a team of three. Between us, we had a range of ‘experience’ levels with the escape room, making for a perfect mix, and – in my opinion – a perfect team size for a game like this. The lobby area is much smaller than most escape rooms, so as we waited for our friend to arrive, we stood to one side reading through the waiver and making small talk with our host. Just as we were about to be led to the room, an enormous group of around 20 people who had not made a booking showed up asking if they could play a room there and then. I felt for the Games Master as they dealt with the chaos of that group arriving to the world’s smallest lobby all at once, and it did cause a slight delay to the start time of our game as we huddled in the corner patiently. But after a little while, we were at our room’s door and off into the magical world of “The Magical Emporium”.

 

 

The room starts impressively as you find yourself in a cobblestone alleyway outside of a row of shops. I really like this “looking into shop front mechanic”, and Escape Edinburgh did well to recreate a magical atmosphere in this space. As we could tell from the offset, there were many more puzzles to be found inside but our first task was simple: Get inside, somehow.

 

Magic and Mystery in the Air

The room did a fairly good job of taking us through the narrative and puzzling journey in terms of gameplay. It was a fairly linear room, although there were moments when different members of our group were split up from one another, relaying and reciting information we’d found. There was plenty of searching and finding, and plenty of locks to keep us occupied too. At one point did we get stuck and require a clue. The puzzle was something that had been staring us in the face for a while, but after much staring it didn’t quite click for us, so we opted for a clue. Besides this one puzzle, the overall game felt like it had a good balance of fun and puzzling to suit a newbie group (such as ourselves) and still give that magical spark that makes someone want to come back for more escape rooms. My life goal to create more escape room enthusiasts is therefore complete!

Since The Magic Emporium is a franchise escape room available at the Escape group, you might notice a similarly named room available at a number of other locations around the UK. Notable: Chelmsford, Lincoln, Walton Pier, Newcastle, Basildon and of course the venue we visited: Edinburgh. In general, rooms of the same name are the same across different locations. However some may have notable differences. So an experience at another venue may be slightly different than the one we had here. Similarly, being a franchise escape room, I find that sometimes- but not always, there’s a little wear and tear. This holds true for The Magic Emporium which I have no doubt was a stunning room in it’s glory days but now suffers a little roughness around the edges and slight breaks that can’t be easily fixed. That said, if you’re not put off by details like this, it’s still a solid escape room.

 

The Magic Emporium: The Verdict

A fun little room that suited our newbie group very well. We weren’t overly challenged, but we did have a lot of fun and appreciated the environment and setting a lot. The Magic Emporium would be an excellent room for kids and families alike, as there’s a fun mix of traditional locks and more ‘magical’ activations of hidden puzzles. It might not satisfy the enthusiast’s itch, but still worth a visit if you’re in the area.

 

 

The Magic Emporium is available at Chelmsford, Lincoln, Walton Pier, Newcastle, Basildon, and of course the location we did it at: Edinburgh. The room is (as far as we’re aware) identical at all locations.

EscapeSC: Break the Internet | Review

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Break the Internet Review | Congrats! Your company’s new social media site, Sincere Screen, is about to get a big update! Nothing could go wrong…right?

Date Played: February 2023
Time taken: 30 minutes
Number of Players: 4
Difficulty: Medium

Escape SC are easily one of the most unique groups of people out there crating escape games because… Well… They’re a university group! Damn, I wish we’d had something like this when I was at university.

As such, it’s always a little hard to talk about the “Escape SC” style, because it changes year on year when new students join the club, and other graduate (hopefully onto a very successful career in game design themselves). But what the group does do consistently is create one, sometimes two new digital games each year, and if there’s one thread uniting all of them, it’s that they’re really, really good.

 

 

Break the Internet

Their latest adventure is called “Break the Internet” and poses you, the player, as an unpaid intern for a website about to launch a big social media campaign. Except, the files are corrupted. Too bad your boss is on holiday and can’t remember her password to the laptop she’s saved all the correct imagery on. It’s up to you to fix everything. Find those photos, fix the issues, or risk your internship. So, no pressure, hey.

The story is light-hearted and contains more than a bit of tongue-in-cheek humour! We’ve all had a dreadful internship like this where your bosses think they can just shunt their problems onto your plate whilst they go off on holiday. I’ve no doubt the students at Escape SC are also creating from the typical student experience of sacrificing a lot to get into university, get the best grades, only to be given the most menial and needlessly stressful job ever. Yeah, I’ve been there too.

Sandwiched between a few other more ARG-like games, my regular team of Escaping the Closet (Al, Ash and Tasha) got together to give Break the Internet a go on a calm Monday evening. I’d just finished up with work moments earlier, and was excited to dive into my second shift internship at Sincere Screen. A call from my new boss? Sitting somewhere sunny and sipping a cocktail. Ugh, the audacity of some people. Haha.

 

Web-solutely Good Fun

In terms of gameplay and puzzles, Break the Internet differs in earlier games by the team such as Science Splice in that we found it a little bit shorter and a little bit easier – but no less fun. We really enjoy the humour and topics they cover, good puzzles are just the icing on the cake. You start at your boss’s desk trying to crack her password based on a number of clues. Then, once you get into the computer, you’ve got to search around for the files to find what you need.

As you can imagine, many of the puzzles revolve around computers – there’s search and find, there’s mathematical puzzles, and there’s a fun amount of interactive ones too. What can I say, I love drawing on the screen. Hidden among those puzzles were memes and gems from the early internet era, neatly tied in with a very realistic “file hunt” game mechanic we enjoyed a lot.

There’s a logical sense of progression and linearity, but at times that linearity is taken quite far. What I mean is, at any given time all of us were working on the same puzzle at the same time. This is part in the way the game is set up, but also in the way that when one person clicks something it redirects for every player. So all of us were, quite literally, on the same page. Without being able to have different players move around different screens at once, we resorted to using screenshots of information from one area to solve another puzzle, and in more moments than not, one person did the bulk of the clicking, whilst the rest of us watched patiently.

If this isn’t an issue for you, then you won’t be bothered by this – and for us, we were doing this room at a more leisurely pace than we normally would, so though unusual, we still found it fun.

 

 

Surfing the Bright and Colourful World Wide Web

One of the things we enjoyed the most about Break the Internet were the visuals. Quite simply, this is a really lovely looking game. There’s a lot of care and effort gone into making it pop, from 3D graphics to illustrations, to a bright and poppy internet interface. As with previous games, Escape SC do a lot with a platform like Telescape, typically used for converting physical escape rooms to a digital format, instead Escape SC take the genre of a play at home escape room and create fictional worlds packed with details. It’s a lot of fun.

The team have also gone to the extra effort of having video portions where you’re introduced to the characters of the game, setting the story and breaking up the puzzle solving chunks.

 

The Verdict

Break the Internet is a fun game. We completed it quite fast – but we still reckon you get a lot of value for your money with this one – at the time of writing, it costs $7 USD to play Break the Internet, but we were kindly provided with a code for free. It would be best played in a smaller group, perhaps even best played solo. Some of the earlier Escape SC games are no longer available, so whilst I don’t know what the team’s plans are for this one – it’s best to play it sooner than later!

 

Escape the Internet is a digital game and can be booked by heading to Escape SC’s website here.

Envelescape: Thornbright Mansion Chapter 1 | Review

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Envelescape Review: You and your party of property investors are eager to view the illustrious Thornbright Mansion that has just gone up for sale, but not everything is as it seems. Strange damages, missing documents, and cryptic notes alert you to something far more sinister inside this home.

Date Played: February 2022
Time Taken: 25 minutes
Number of Players: 3
Difficulty: Very Easy

Envelescape is probably best known for running a Kickstarter way back at the start of 2023. Fully funded within one hour, it ended up raising 71 593 CA$ which meant success – the project would be brought to live. Fast forward to a year later, and one of the creators reached out inviting us to play. Though I’d missed the Kickstarter myself (*shakes fist at the universe for always being broke in January*), I was excited to play the game in it’s fully realised, shiny, pop-up form.

Envelescape has done an excellent job of building up a community. From a team of fairly unknown game designers, to hit the big numbers in Kickstarter and be as popular as they have been in the months since, a big round of applause! To say we were excited would be an understatement. And so, on a bright Tuesday afternoon, I invited 2 of my favourite puzzlers round of an evening of ‘envelope’ games – Including Scarlet Envelope, Enigmailed, and Envelescape. For no particular reason, we went with Envelescape first. In hindsight this was the right thing to do, as Envelescape, being vastly easier and quicker to play than the other two, warmed up our brains in a fast paced 25 minutes.

I wasn’t sure if 25 minutes was right, since the Kickstarter suggested 60 – 90 minutes, so in true The Escape Roomer form, before writing the review I handed the game to one of my fellow writers here for a more balanced opinion. How long did they take? 15 minutes, solo. So, it’s a quick game. But why? Well, it’s easy – but is it too easy? Maybe yes. Let’s get into why.

 

Image (c) Envelescape

 

Welcome to Thornbright Mansion

Envelescape is a fairly non-linear game set in a small ‘pop-up environment’, representing the front hallway of Thornbright mansion. There’s a web-portal with six images on it, representing the six puzzles to be solved in the environment. You can more or less do these in any order, although the solutions for some of them may help with later ones. But in all, the flow of the game was straightforward. We looked at the 6 images, found where they were in the house, solved the puzzle, inputted our answer, and then opened an envelope. Inside each, a scrap of paper such as a letter, or a receipt. Some of these papers were puzzles in themselves, but most were narrative – carrying the story along. Rinse and repeat until you’ve solved all 6.

Of the six puzzles, we found most of them self contained, and very easy. For example – light spoilers incoming – one of the puzzles was a riddle written on the floor. This riddle wasn’t well hidden, in fact, due to the way we opened the game, it was actually visible to us from the beginning. It was also a well known riddle we’d seen countless times before. Before we read the introduction, one of our party had already solved the riddle, citing that they’d seen it on one of those Facebook “Can you solve this brainteaser” posts earlier that same week. What you see is what you get. In this specific case, the whole puzzle was contained within the one riddle, and this rule held more or less the same for the remaining 5. No secret step 2, and no hidden layers.

At the 10 second mark of the game, we were 1/6th of the way through the game… That’s got to be a record, right?

“But what about the story, the materials, the fun factor?” I hear you ask!

 

Paper Ghosts, or Something Scarier?

Since we solved all the puzzles quickly, the bulk of our gameplay was spent reading the materials. Between the three of us, we took turns reading each of the materials in silly voices, putting on affectations of the characters in the house. The house was full of curious characters, and we loved bringing them to life. For sure, there isn’t a huge amount of reading. There’s an introduction, and then the additional information supplied by the materials in the envelopes… But despite the few materials in this game, the creators managed to communicate the story quite well! A certain aura of the creepy, the mysterious, and a touch of the macabre. A mysterious old house, and you – a team of property investors coming to investigate. But with documents missing, and strange scratches in the wall… What is going on?!

Well… I don’t know.

Unfortunately this is the first chapter, so we were left with more questions than answers by the end. A cliff hanger? Gasp!

I have a theory about what is really going on in the house, and if I’m right, I have to congratulate the authors on seeding little clues in this first chapter. But until that time, we’re left wondering.

 

Image (c) Envelescape

 

A Physical, Tactile Experience

So how does Envelescape look? How does it feel? Well, it’s a small tactile pop-up room that fits down into a small envelope. It’s made from a sturdy card stock and glossy laminate. Our particular copy of the game had to travel a really long distance from Canada to the UK. It had some slight damage on arrival – bent card, and the envelopes inside looked like they’d jostled around a little too much. But I can’t fault the creators for that since that’s outside of their control.

In terms of illustrations… Envelescape is super bright and visually very fun! The illustrator did a really lovely job of bringing a spooky old house to life, with a blocky, cell-shaded cartoon-like veneer. It’s really pretty. I love pop-up games, and I doubley love them when you can tell the creators have put a lot of love into making them visually impressive.

However, if you want to really enjoy and take in the lovely illustrations, you’ll have to be quick. There was no mechanic in the game to keep the pop-up scene open, and so one of us always had to keep their hands on the game holding it open manually whilst the other two people solved. We tried using our mobile devices and pins to keep it open, but the process was a little clunky, and the game didn’t feel built for anything other than holding it open with your hand. In the end, taking some photographs and viewing them from our mobile device rather than try to wield the pop-up scene worked best for us. For a pop-up game, this was a little disappointing and felt like a big oversight. For such an impressive and good looking game – I want to show it off! It would look beautiful open on my board game shelf, and it should really stay open on its own. Perhaps there’s an opportunity in the future for the company to sell a stand and pushpins to use to keep their game open?

But that brings me to the second thought our team had, and that was: Why pop-up?

Don’t get me wrong, I love pop-up games, but we definitely felt that besides looking ‘behind’ objects, there wasn’t anything in the game that particularly lent itself to pop-up mechanics, and the pop-ups themselves were fairly basic. A pop-up flight of stairs, and two cupboards. The rest was a flat illustration. According to the Kickstarter, the game was designed to recreate the physical feeling of being in an escape room, but we thought that besides one moment in the game (a moment we accidentally bypassed anyway) the game didn’t need to be pop-up at all. It would have worked just as well on a single, printed piece of paper, or as a digital point and click game.

If that sounds like a criticism, it isn’t meant to be. I love that they had a cool idea and decided to render it in something that (at the time) not a lot of companies were doing, it makes Envelescape unique and marketable. But pop-up environments are meant to be immersive. They’re unique and rich with opportunities for really creative puzzles that don’t fit into other mediums. I would love to see Envelescape take better advantage of this and create puzzles that only work in this environment.

 

The Verdict

This game has a lot of good points, and an equal number of areas we felt slightly disappointed in. I think we all thought the game had more potential, however any company’s first game is always going to be a bit of test run (I would probably die of embarrassment if someone wrote a review today of the first few games I designed and published) . With this first chapter of what I hope is a long and successful series, the creative team probably knows what works and what doesn’t work, and I’ve no doubt they’ll carry the learnings well into the next. I’m actually really excited to see what Envelescape do in the future. It’s clear the company has fantastic ideas, a dedicated and talented team, their first game was fun – it just needed more. And players wanting ‘more’ of a game is an excellent problem to have!

As a final note to this whole review, as someone who is a game designer who works on pop-up puzzle games myself, I thought long and hard about asking one of my co-writers to lead on this review instead. But after weighing up the pros and cons (and since all of us who played broadly agree on the verdict), I decided that actually my background gives me a good experience, perspective and a certain authority to talk about pop-up puzzle games as a medium. What works, what doesn’t work – and what has big potential. I recognise the hard work Envelescape have put into Thornbright Mansion (god knows it’s hard making a game like this) and I would applaud them for it. I’m excited to see what they come up with next.

So do we recommend this game? Yes! Support the company. Support creative people with a vision and the drive to create it. Support pop-up games. If you want to support Envelescape, consider buying Chapter 1 on their website here.

Please Note: We received this experience for free in exchange for an honest review.

EscWelt: Orbital Box Constructor & Space Box | Review

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“3D Puzzle Orbital Box is a new form of intellectual logic game designed to play the story and scenarios of the EscapeWelt quest. After assembling the constructor, get to the secret compartment with your loved ones without leaving home! Double the fun! A thrilling experience, tricky traps, and intricate puzzles of the quest room await you. 3D Puzzle Orbital Box is designed by experienced engineers who have developed unique puzzles and multi-level challenges.”

EscWelt

 

Completion Time: 1 hour each (to solve), 2 hours (to construct)
Date Played: December 2022
Party Size: 1
Difficulty: Hard

Love ERs?  Love flat pack furniture DIY? Want to meld the two into an afternoon’s entertainment and/or frustration (depending on your level of dexterity and patience)? Then the Orbital Constructor set is ideal for you.

I’ve waxed lyrical about my love for wooden puzzle boxes before when I reviewed EscWelt’s House of the Dragon.  And I still get real childlike pleasure from finding them in IRL escape rooms, especially in any of the brilliant games at Escape Plan where carefully themed and hand-crafted puzzle boxes frequently replace the erstwhile padlock. So I was first with my hand up when EscWelt asked us to take a look at two of their other puzzle games – Orbital Constructor and Space Box.

 

Where to Start?

Orbital and Space Box sit alongside EscWelt’s range of hand built, complex 3D puzzles and you can buy them already set up and ready to go.  But if you fancy a double challenge you can also buy their ‘constructor’ kits and do the building yourself.  Which is what I sat down to do one grey day in that confusing nowhere time between Christmas and New Year.  From the very start it’s easy to see why EscWelt is proud of its reputation for quality hand-built puzzles because right from the get-go it was obvious that putting the Orbital together was going to be some mean feat.

 

 

With the box open, the sheer number of pieces of laser cut puzzle parts was suddenly quite daunting, as was the rather hefty instruction/build manual that accompanied them.  The puzzle pieces come in 6 sheets and my childish, ‘I don’t need to read the instructions’ instinct meant I wanted to start popping out all the parts straight away.  I can only say this is very much not a good idea.  Resist the popping urge.  The pieces are numbered but sometimes the numbers are on the surrounding sheet rather than the piece itself so had I given into my initial instinct I would have had one big pile of pieces and no clue which was which.  Thankfully I did actually read the instructions (my late DIY loving dad would be so proud of me!) and realised that I needed to do this build in an organised and coherent fashion.

 

DIY Puzzling

The actual build process is fairly simple if you follow the instruction manual carefully.  For those with middle aged eyesight like me the writing and the pictures are pretty small and you do have to be able to see the detail as some pieces are very similar and can fit in ‘wrong’ places.  But if you pay attention, double check you’ve got the right piece facing the right way, then it’s a step by step process clearly laid out.  There’s no glue, sticking, cutting or similar involved as all the pieces slide or click into place.  The only extra you might want to have on hand is a candle as some of the parts that you’ll need to slide or rotate when playing the actual game will be easier to move if they’ve been waxed.  (This is one part of the instructions I missed and it did make it difficult to move a few integral parts later on).

 

 

Once you’ve done all the construction you’re left with a substantial little box that has a hinged opening lid and space inside to fit a gift or surprise if you intend to hand this on to someone else to solve.  You insert a couple of ‘keys’ and the box is locked until either you or your giftee has solved the 3D challenges that it poses.

 

 

You might think that having built the box from scratch, the ER puzzle-solving part of the Orbital box would be spoiled or far too easy.  But it’s really not.  Yes, you might already know that you need to slide a few pieces around, rotate a disc or two but that’s all the help the construction process gives you.  Once the box is locked, getting back into it is still a challenge.  The puzzle part is similar to EscWelt’s other 3D challenges, and other similar products on the market – figure out where to start to generate a code that you can enter into a certain part of the box to release the lid and plunder the goodies in side.  The only thing missing for me with the Orbital was the narrative element.  When I played ‘House of the Dragon’ there was a leaflet explaining a brief narrative reason for the game but my instructions for the Orbital didn’t include anything similar.  When I had to go to the EscWelt’s website for a hint in solving the box (see, I told you it wasn’t easy even after you’ve built it yourself!) I realised there was supposed to be a space theme but, for me, that isn’t clear in the box itself.  That’s a minor niggle though.  The box can be played simply as a collection of mechanical puzzles to solve and is just as enjoyable.

I also played EscWelt’s Space Box (already constructed) at the same time.  The mechanics are very similar to Orbital (and House of the Dragon) and will feel familiar if you’ve played any 3D challenges before.  Both offer enough of a challenge to get you thinking (finding the point to start can take a while) but aren’t so thorny that you get frustrated and give up.  And the EscWelt’s website offers video hints to help you on your way if you do get stuck.

 

Final Thoughts 

As I said at the start, I love a puzzle box and these from EscWelt are satisfyingly challenging to solve.  If I’m honest, I think I’d skip the ‘construction’ part in future, I’d rather get straight to the puzzles, but if you’re of a model making mind then this is a good way to get two fun hobbies out of one item.

Please Note: We received this experience for free in exchange for an honest review.

Top Escape Rooms: Rockstar Swan Song | Review

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Top Escape Rooms: Swan Song Review | Dean Waylon is the front man of the band – Us, Them, Or Dean. Tonight, they will be performing the kick-off show of their concert run at the Colosseum Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. Checking in Dean’s dressing room, his manager finds Dean’s personal belongings, but no sign of Dean. Find the clues and solve the puzzles as you retrace the career of Dean Waylon. If you’re quick, you can get the scoop on his disappearance before security catches you.

Completion Time: 59:00
Date Played: 8th October 2022
Party Size: 3

About Top Escape Rooms

Rockstar Swan Song is one of five escape rooms provided Top Escape Rooms in Holt Heath, Worcestershire. The room is based on the touring band Us, Them Or Dean and their frontman called…. *checks notes* Dean; whom has gone missing before a Las Vegas show and we need to locate him!

This was supposed to be a party size of 4. However one of the party was ill, therefore 3 of us had to take to the stage instead!

Poster (c) Top Escape Rooms

Before We Begin…

The party consisted of myself and 2 friends who all share two things in common… our love of the Netflix series Cobra Kai and that we are all current/former music professionals.

Another thing… my teamies had never done an escape room before. As an escape room ambassador, I’ve got to get this right and not scare them off! When I saw this music-themed room advertised I booked it post-haste.

Poster (c) Top Escape Rooms

I’ve Lost My Frontman…

Our GM was welcoming and friendly. He explained that the game was linear, allowing us to fully focus on the task in hand. We then passed round a directional lock (see below) for familiarity, giving us a practice go on them to get a tactile feel of how they work. This was great, especially as my two teamies had not used one before.

The GM then spoke about his own background of working in the music industry. This was interesting in itself and I didn’t even realise the fluid change into the backstory of the game; until it actually happened(!) Next thing we know, we have been tasked with finding his frontman Dean, as the show was to begin in one hour.

We were given our backstage/dressing room passes, alongside a digital notepad and the timer starts to tick away!

Pay Attention Russ…

Mental Note. Don’t steamroll the room. I had to make myself not get too involved and at times, stand back to allow my teamies to experience as much escape room fun as they possibly could…. otherwise the escape room gods would never forgive me.

This Felt Too Familiar…

I’ve been there before. About to go on stage and a band member (usually the frontperson!) has gone for a walk without telling anyone. The rest of the band now sweating bullets and arguing about who is going to sing in their place…

The dressing room was very thematic; there was that feeling of a bare room being dressed-up for it’s specific habitant at the time, ready for it to be changed for the next performer in minimal turnaround time. On one wall, were three very distinctive touring posters of the band from years past. Each one, telling a story (and a puzzle) of what happened and what is to come.

All but one of the puzzles were padlock based. The one, was an electronic-based, fader/mixer type puzzle with an amplifier. It looked incredibly authentic and had the biggest wow factor. I personally would like to have seen more electronic-based puzzles, especially considering how much electronics are used in a musician’s day-to-day life! The types of puzzles included, but not limited to; map-reading, wordplay, maths, light-based and musical.

I’ve Never Heard “Helpful” And “Stage Manager” Put In a Sentence Together…

When we were stuck and needed a hint, an electric guitar chord would strike and the stage manager would leave us a tailored message under the countdown clock. The hints were useful and relevant, however in some cases; unsolicited. There were times, I feel, if the stage manager had let us have another moment or so to reflect, we would have solved the focussed set-piece on our own.

My suggestion would be to Top Escape Rooms for all their games; to ask how much input the hint-giver should provide to the team before the game begins.

*Internally Panics*

With around 12 minutes to go, I felt we were doing rather well….

Until we opened a padlock to a second room.

At this point, I internally panicked.

“We have 12 minutes to solve another room?!”

Well, it was two puzzles total. However, that revelation turned me from a semi-seasoned escaper, into a fumbling idiot. The majority of work for the last two set pieces was done by my teamies, who once again, had never done an escape room before. (Well done Russ, you’re letting the whole escape room industry down here….)

To their credit however, they pulled us (me) through with one minute to spare.

As much as the first room was thematically and immersivity beautiful, the second room felt bare in comparison. Firstly, because there were only two puzzles, it felt unbalanced from a weighting perspective. Secondly, the walls were blank with one poster, that didn’t really add to the theming or immersion in any way; it lacked the personality the first room had. It wasn’t a complete deal-breaker, but the overall experience was certainly reduced because of this.

As you can see, my music career was short-lived, based on the way I held a guitar…

For The Music Dreamer Or Virtuoso?

My escape newbie teamies found the room not too easy and not too difficult. Therefore, this would be a perfect choice for someone who hasn’t played an escape room before. More seasoned players however, might find (particularly the first few) aspects of the room, to not be challenging enough.

The puzzle designs (again, particularly with the first few) are almost-all quite common and have been often used in already existing escape rooms. There are also two maths-based puzzles. There is a calculator in the room, however if you are really adverse to them, the second of the two may cause frustration…

The music based puzzle however, was very innovative. That being said, we collectively agreed that it may completely stump a team with zero musical intuition.

Unfortunately however, this room is now retired! We were the very last team to play it!

Touring Is Expensive!

For a party of 4 as we intended, this room cost £17.50 per person. This is a solid price point, however big thanks to Top Escape Rooms for handing me a £10 voucher to use for a future game in light of our poorly 4th player. This kind of customer service is greatly appreciated and I have already booked two further rooms here in the upcoming months as a result of this gesture.

Rating

Overall, Top Escape Rooms have a solid room in Rockstar Swan Song. It is a great one for beginners, with its linear design and organic learning curve. The second room falls a little bit flat, however the first room has a strong thematic and authentic take on the dressing room of an actual touring musician, which was a welcome sight for us as a team of musicians.

My teamies both enjoyed themselves and are looking to do another escape room closer to Christmas time. I’m counting that as a mission successful from an ambassador point of view!

Top Escape Rooms’s Rockstar Swan Song is now retired, but their other games can be booked by heading to their website here.

Natural History Museum: Mystery at the Museum – The Search for Dippy | Review

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Mystery at the Museum: The Search for Dippy Review | The year is 1905 and you have been invited to a special preview of the newest display at the Natural History Museum – ‘Dippy the Diplodocus’.  But when you arrive the curators are in a panic and you realise something is amiss – you’ve found a note that tells you several parts of Dippy the Diplodocus are going to be stolen before the display opens!  Follow the clues around the Museum, question the suspects and track down the culprit before the King arrives for the display’s launch. Can you help the curators prevent a national scandal?

Date played: October 2022
Time taken: 90 mins
Number of players: 3
Difficulty: Easy-Moderate

 

Night at the Museum

 

Courtesy of the Trustees of the Natural History Museum London

 

Which of us wouldn’t leap at the chance to sneak around behind the scenes in a museum after the public have been ushered out and the doors locked behind them? And when that museum is London’s Natural History Museum in South Kensington the appeal is even greater.  London’s museums and galleries have long embraced the idea of late, after dark openings with extra access to exhibitions alongside bars and live music.  But the NHM’s ‘mystery’ evening might be the first time a museum has allowed eager ER enthusiasts and puzzle hunters to roam its corridors in search of suspects and solutions.  Trying to temper my excitement that, at nightfall and behind closed doors, the exhibits might come to life for me as they did for Ben Stiller, I headed down to South Ken to find out if my detectoring skills were up to solving the mystery at the museum.

Impressive Game Space

 

Courtesy of the Trustees of the Natural History Museum London

 

First up, wow.  Just wow.  When we arrive at dusk the Natural History Museum is looking glorious in the gloaming.  It really is a stunning piece of Victorian architecture which lives up to it’s ‘Cathedral of Nature’ epithet.  Entering under the main arch is thrilling when you realise that you’re really about to have this vast space to yourselves for the evening.  Well, you and probably 75 other people.  And only a few of the galleries.  But still.  You still feel… special.

But if there’s anything that’s guaranteed to make you feel insignificant rather than special it’s the humungous skeleton of a blue whale that greets you as you enter the central Hintze Hall.  Suspended dramatically from the ceiling and lit up in startling red, the whale certainly draws your attention.  There’s not much time, however, to feel the vast inferiority of the human species because as soon as you arrive a game card is pushed into your hand and you are whisked off to meet Inspector Lestrade.  The game, it seems, is already afoot.

 

Prehistoric Puzzling

 

One word of warning – although the publicity for this event promotes it as an ‘escape room-like game’, it is most definitely not an escape room.  Arrive expecting an ER and you will be disappointed.  Attempt to rummage around the museum, opening drawers and searching cabinets as you would in an ER and you’re likely to be expelled!  But while it isn’t an ER that doesn’t stop it being a whole heap of fun.

To get started you need to read the game card you were given on arrival.  It outlines the mystery that faces you.  The unveiling of the new exhibition featuring the skeleton of Dippy the Diplodocus is due to take place tomorrow.  But a suspicious note has been found, suggesting a crime will take place before the grand opening and which could plunge the museum into unwanted scandal.  The game card also gives you the names and brief bios of six suspects who have been ordered to stay in the museum by Lestrade until the case has been closed.

 

Courtesy of the Trustees of the Natural History Museum London

 

Lestrade also gives you a copy of the note and your next task is to decipher it.  This is really the only actual puzzle involved in the game and it’s not especially hard but does get you moving around the galleries that surround the main museum hall.  And stopping to ask a few of those suspects some penetrating questions along the way will also help your case solving.

Because this is mostly about interacting with those suspects.  It’s really a traditional ‘whodunnit’ and you will get the most out of your evening and the event if you spend time grilling the suspects (whose period costume makes them easy to spot) and honing your theories.  You can question them as often and for as long as you like, or listen in as other players ask their own questions.  Although they may tell you a few lies, they will also give you some nuggets of truth and if you can unpick their elaborate webs of accusations, fabrications, deflections and evasions, you might just be able to work out, in the words of Mr Sherlock Holmes himself, who had the “means, motive and opportunity” to commit the crime.

 

Dippy’s Dino Denouement

 

Once you’ve solved the opening puzzle, interrogated your suspects and worked out a convincing theory you can take your hypothesis and test it on Sherlock.  Holmes solved the mystery in 17 minutes himself so he’s happy to throw you a bone or two if you’re not quite on the mark.  And if, after a couple of guesses, you’re still not 100% correct, Holmes will take pity on you and give you the full story.  Because no-one wants to go home without knowing who really did design to destroy Dippy’s debut.

 

The Verdict?

 

Overall, if you approach this as a mystery solving game along the lines of a traditional murder whodunnit then you will have loads of fun.  The mystery is sufficiently knotty to keep you questioning suspects and untangling theoretical threads for well over an hour and, for the adults, there’s an in venue bar to keep your whistle wet and your mind sharp.  Full kudos to the actors playing the suspects who handle even the most obscure of questions with aplomb, keep in character throughout and manage to retain details of the multiple narrative threads all while dropping gentle hints and prods to get you moving in the right direction.  And the venue itself, the access to certain areas of it after hours and when it’s empty of tourists, is worth the price of admission alone.

A few minor niggles.  Any expectations of difficult tradition ER puzzling will be disappointed and I think, personally, that they should remove the reference to an ‘escape room-like game’ from promotional material and instead focus on the massive positive of it being a strong mystery-solving evening.   Those ER players who don’t enjoy engaging with live performers will want to steer clear as well.  Talking to the actors throughout is the only way to play this game.

There were also some weaknesses in communication that left us unaware we had to take our final conclusions to Holmes to be checked.  It was only when we eavesdropped on other groups that we realised.  And there’s no satisfyingly dramatic conclusion when the culprit is officially unmasked.  Because the event has a staggered start time with groups arriving and getting started throughout the evening, everyone reaches their final answer at different times.  Once we’d reported to Holmes, that was it.  Game no longer afoot.  So the evening sort of petered out.

We had a fun evening though.  Not too strenuous on the little grey cells, but a nice little mystery to solve in a fantastic location.

 

This event runs for a limited number of days in October and November. Book via the Natural History Museum website here.

 

Courtesy of the Trustees of the Natural History Museum London

Local Bonus

If you want to get into a suitable detective frame of mind before the game, or want to continue afterwards, then I highly recommend a visit to the Evans and Peel detective agency (about a 15 minute walk away).  A secret speakeasy bar with a fantastic, and inventive, cocktail menu, you need to provide a good cover story before you can gain access.  The more imaginative and bonkers the better.  It’s advised to book.

Evans and Peel Detective Agency, 310c Earls Ct Rd, London SW5 9BA

 

Arcadium Adventures: A Most Mysterious Convention | Review

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Arcadium Adventures: A Most Mysterious Convention Review | Chapter One in Arcadium’s Most Mysterious Cases, now you can enjoy more of the intrigue, the mysteries and the stories from wherever you are! This experience is a most enjoyable way to spend an afternoon or evening at home and can even be used as greeting card or gift.

Date Played: August 2022
Time Taken: ~1 hr
Number of Players: 2
Difficulty: Comfortable

After taking a long break – mostly spent moving house from London to Edinburgh – I was excited to return back to the world of puzzle games! They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, right? Well this saying is definitely true for all things escape room, board game and a combination of the two (like this one).

Having settled down, I couldn’t wait to invite fellow puzzler Rebecca round for an afternoon of puzzling. The very first game in our list came all the way over from Arcadium Adventures in Australia. Arcadium Adventures is a brick-and-mortar escape room based in Brisbane who specialise in all things magic and mystery. For book lovers and adventure afficionados, they also have a series of “play at home escape rooms” whose names all begin with “A Most Mysterious…”

Over the course of two hours, broken in the middle by lunch, we played through both Chapter One and Chapter Two of Arcadium Adventures’ series. Here’s how we got on:

 

 

A Mysterious Box Arrives

The first thing to note about Arcadium Adventures is the boxes they arrive in… So small, yet so much fun! Chapter One was about the size of a small paperback, so it fit perfectly through my letterbox. It’s a good quality box, very sturdy and lightweight. However, if you wanted to play the game but didn’t want to pay postage, the company also offers the games as digital downloads. I’m assuming these would be a PDF version of all the printed materials we received. A few items may need to be printed out, but mostly there’s no reason it couldn’t be played online.

Inside, we opened it up to discover a wealth of different pieces of paper and clippings all that related to our mystery at hand. A black envelope sealed with a wax stamp titled “Begin Here” points to where (and how) to get started. Inside this envelope was an introductory, expositional piece. Our mission, should we choose to accept it, was simple:

 

ARCANACON – The Annual Mystery Convention

ARCANACON is the fictional (awww!) annual mystery convention and sadly we were not able to attend this year. However, the organisers of ARCANACON have sent us a letter with a secret message. Across the materials about the convention is a puzzle to be solved. If we manage to solve everything, we’ll uncover the secret message.

The ARCANACON Radio was also available to us which, we were pleasantly surprised to discover wasn’t just music but also a true radio-style broadcast that occasionally interrupted our play with fun messages. We also had access to a webpage which provided recipes, a chatbot, additional hints, and a place to input our answers.

The creators of Arcadium Adventures really outdid themselves with all the little extra details, and we appreciated those a lot! They added an extra level of immersion to the whole experience. I only hope that one day ARCANACON will be a real life thing we can actually attend. Now that would be fun!

 

 

Puzzles & Papercraft

In terms of the puzzles, the structure of the game was quite simple. Every puzzle was tackled in isolation and every puzzle gave a digit output that at the end of the game would be strung together to reveal the secret message. Whilst this is a fairly common ‘secret message delivery system’ regular players will recognise from other games out there, Arcadium Adventures required a 23 digit code. The more digits, the more room for error… And there was a little bit of error on our part. Such as accidentally mixing up the order of two puzzles, or making small typos when relaying the 23 digits. But nothing we couldn’t overcome after a few attempts.

In terms of those individual puzzles, there was a range of different puzzle types. There were some folding puzzles, plenty of cipher puzzles, puzzles where you had to overlay one material onto another, logic puzzles, and so on and so on.

Overall we’d probably say that both the game’s puzzles and it’s overall input wasn’t particularly innovative. For starters, we both agreed that every puzzle in the game we’d seen somewhere else before – but that does come with the territory when you play hundreds and hundreds, so I can’t fault them there. But more than this there was an overall sense of the objects being quite random, and their solutions feeling a little forced. There’s a lot of discourse in the industry I won’t get into here about mimetic and diegetic puzzles, so I’ll just distil that down into “the vibes” were a little off.

But that’s not to say we didn’t have fun, and this would be an excellent introductory game to somebody who has never played a “play at home escape room”. The creators should be very proud for building a well balanced and enjoyable puzzle game.

 

Image (C) Arcadium Adventures

 

The Verdict

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the first of the Arcadium Adventures games. It was good for at least an hour’s worth of puzzling fun, set within a quirky story about a mystery convention, and really pushed us to think outside of the box on some of the puzzles. It’s a great quality box with a wealth of fun details inside. As mentioned, we’d recommend this game for beginners who want to try their hand at a ‘play at home escape room’. It’s a good level of difficulty to be challenging in parts and satisfying in others.

There is room for improvement for sure, but as the company continues to make more adventures like these I’ve no doubt they’ll get better!

 

A Most Mysterious Convention can be purchased from Arcadium Adventures’ shop here.

Please Note: We received this experience for free in exchange for an honest review.