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.

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:

Find the identity of Celeste’s killer
Discover the location of Celeste’s cryptex
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.

Lost Sock Studio: Escape from Mystwood Mansion | Review

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Escape from Mystwood Mansion| In this first-person puzzle escape room game, you are trapped in the mysterious Mystwood mansion. Explore the mansion and find hidden compartments while solving puzzles and deciphering codes to find a way out. Will you escape or linger to uncover the mansion’s final secret?

Developer: Lost Sock Studio
Date Played: September 2023
Console: Steam
Number of Players: 1
Time Taken: 100 minutes

I don’t know why but I get really excited when I see a new name or new game studio pop up in our little ‘escape room’ niche corner of the internet. So when I started hearing about Escape from Mystwood Mansion from the brand new studio “Lost Sock”, I was more than intrigued! Lost Sock are about as indie as it’s possible to get – they’re a game developer duo from Sweden and this is their first release. And, well, for a first release, I was super impressed! Tt’s polished, the puzzles satisfying, and it’s comfortable to play. It’s also very marketable. I mean, that spooky old mansion and launching right before Halloween, it’s *chefs kiss*.

But enough about the marketability of a game like Escape from Mystwood Mansion, and let’s get into the nitty gritty of why I enjoyed this game!

Deliver a Package to the Library or Face the Consequence

Escape from Mystwood Mansion opens with you, the protagonist, stepping out of your delivery truck with a package. You knock on the door, the door swings open, and very quickly you find yourself trapped. You are Test Subject Number 83, and it’s clear from the narrative of the game you’re not the first to be locked in by the house – nor will you be the last!

What follows is a classic escape room adventure as you move from room to room, solving puzzles, finding keys, cracking codes, and uncovering secret doors. Sometimes you’re breaking things too. I love breaking things.

At the very beginning, you’re given the instruction to “deliver the package to the library”. I actually never got to deliver the package to the library – I think I lost the package somewhere along the way, although I did (for a while) try to keep it with me. Whether this means I ‘won’ or not, I’m not sure, but I certainly escaped and so I’m calling my 110 minutes in the game a resounding success. I escaped from the library itself, as well as a lovely conservatory room, several secret (and slightly creepy) hidden passages, and the foyer.

Now, on my successful exit from Mystwood Mansion, I discovered a secret door that hinted that there were a few tiny details I had missed. At the time of writing, I’ve unlocked two out of the three secret locks to the secret room, and I’m thoroughly looking forward to going back and figuring out what is behind the mysterious final door. But for the meantime, the game is complete.

It’s very hard not to compare this game to Escape Simulator. Thematically, it’s quite similar to the Escape Simulator levels set in a spooky old mansion. The controls feel the same, the movement feels the same, and even a few puzzles are very similar. The game gives me the feeling of playing an Escape Simulator level, for example one from the vast wealth of community workshop escape rooms available on it’s platform. One of the most memorable puzzles in Escape Simulator was a ‘butterfly sequence’ puzzle in which you could move the butterflies around in order to complete the sequence. Now, sequence puzzles are common, but sequence puzzles specifically involving butterflies… Less so!

The View from the Butterfly Room

But for each ‘this is similar’ puzzle, there were countless others which were wholly original – so there’s a balance for sure. It also differs from Escape Simulator in a few marked ways. The levels are enormous, and each room rolls onto the other to build up a big picture of a large house. There’s an underlying story, and touches of light humour I really appreciated. Fans of Escape Simulator will love this.

Puzzling Through Mystwood Mansion

In terms of puzzles, I really enjoyed these. In fact, the puzzles were some of my favourite things in the whole experience. They really felt like escape room puzzles in the classic sense of the word. A few I recognised right away – there’s some pretty common ciphers in there, including Morse Code, Pigpen, as well as a few dashes of anamorphic text and negative space puzzles. But even then, there were plenty other puzzles I didn’t recognise at all and gave my brain a run for it’s money! Over the course of the game, I used very few hints – just a few to confirm what I already knew if something wasn’t working quite the way I expected.

Escape from Mystwood Mansion probably errs on the side of a little short for a game in the genre. For a seasoned escapist who wants to complete everything in the game, you’re looking at around 120 minutes. I took 110, with plenty of breaks, and didn’t quite complete everything. So let’s add on 30 minutes for “going back in and looking for hidden clues I missed”. To get 100% achievements, you’re probably looking at 3 hours. Each ‘room’ itself takes around half an hour to solve, so you’ve travelling through the game quite quickly.

I had almost no technical issues with the game. I say almost, because I did tweak the settings in order to make my playthrough slightly more comfortable (I like my mouse sensitivity as low as possible!), and secondly because I’m convinced that after searching a room top to bottom that a key item was missing – and needed to reset the level in order to find it in it’s place. Personally, I think the extra item disappeared into the ether. Knowing me I probably picked it up and moved it, but after a good 15 minutes of searching, I had no choice but to reset the room.

The Verdict

I’m giving Escape from Mystwood Mansion a solid 4.4/5. Yeah! That’s quite high, but I stand by it. I genuinely had fun playing the game. There’s been a big “escape room game” shaped hole in my life right now that nothing on Steam was quite scratching, and this game came along at the perfect time. It felt spooky, and cosy and exciting in all the right ways, and I felt the designers attention to detail was second to none. I’m also genuinely in awe that it’s the company’s first game. It had a really professional level of polish and I’m absolutely certain this game will be a success.

Is it perfect? No, of course not. But is it good? Yeah! It really is.

I’d recommend this game for just about anyone, but if you’re a big fan of physical escape rooms, this one is fantastic.

Please Note: We were offered a free Steam key in exchanged for an honest review. This does not affect the content of our review.

Escape from Mystwood Mansion can be downloaded from Steam.

Search Party: Chaos at the Park | Review

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Search Party: Chaos at the Park Review | Come one, come all, to the wild amusement park filled with havoc, crazy characters, and mysteries to solve! It’s up to you to create some calm in all the chaos – and fast! Search Party is a 3D search-and-find adventure game. Solve missions, find important objects, uncover motives, and more.

Number of Players: 3
Date Played: June 2023
Time Taken: 1 hour
Difficulty: Easy

Search Party is a new brand of board game experience from the creators of the popular party game: What Do You Meme. I say a ‘new brand’, because there’s nothing else quite like it in their catalogue. And, judging by how they explain the game in the instructions, I doubt this will be the last. The format is very repeatable, and I have a sneaky suspicion there are more “Search Party” games to come.

It is therefore a compelling first venture into the search-and-find genre. The theme, a sprawling and three dimensional circus park is an excellent place to explore a chaotic scene filled with weird and wonderful characters. Throughout the park are various scenes – there are three grandmas who have been shrunk down and can’t get on the roller coaster, there’s zombie on the loose, there’s a witch who crashes into another mid-air and all her belongings are scattered across the park. You get the gist. Big board, lots of things to find, and lots of missions to complete!

Pop-Up Funfairs & Other Shenanigans

The first and most important thing to say about Chaos at the Park is how visually impressive it is. Seriously! Before I’d even played it I knew this would be something special, and so I saved it for a day where I could sit around with a group of friends really getting into the nitty gritty of it. I also was so enamoured by the game, that I paused a work meeting in order to talk about this “very cool thing” I got in the post, and unfold the board to show them. We do a lot of work in the pop-up world, you see, but nothing quite as cool as this!

So all that to say, our group was very impressed by the moment of unfolding the board, laying it out over our table, and watching as the world literally popped up in front of us. A sprawling rollercoaster packed with park-goers, a big wheel, and the pop-up entrance to the park complete with it’s stripey awning. This game looks COOL.

Puzzles and Pop-Up Parks

The second important thing is therefore to mention the puzzles. With your board game you receive 15 missions spread over 83 cards. The missions are brightly coloured and look absolutely adorable all stacked up together in the box. Each of these missions has a ‘start point’ and then a series of questions the players need to answer to progress through the game.

For example: to begin you might be asked to find a clown. Then you’ll be asked where this clown came from – who are they, what they were doing and so on The activities in the park roll backwards in time, meaning as you trace someone’s path you’ll be able to follow where they came from and see them in steps. Since the whole board is only 50 x 50 cm, it was never too difficult to find what we were looking for in any case. Of course, the game is 3D however, so things got very interesting when the clues we were looking for weren’t on the ground but… Up in the air!

If you finish all of these, there’s a bonus booklet which has a whole host of strange things to find around the park. A refrigerator, a tiger, a pair of frogs. Little easter eggs and odd people doing odd little things. These added some amusing moments of bonus gameplay which you can take or leave as you like. I enjoyed these – although most of them I finished solo, long after my co-players had gone home for the evening.

In terms of the difficulty, this is where I think the game falters a little – it is quite easy. But I fully admit that these puzzles are aimed more at a family, children audience than at me. In our team of three, we had a mix of players with differing experience levels, but we were all familiar with games in the genre and knew what to do and how to do it. Each mission took us no more than 5 minutes to complete, making for a speedy and satisfying whiz through the game.

In all, I think a game like this is best played with younger children, with one or two adults gently guiding them through the experience.

Where’s Wally Meets Micro Macro Crime City

So, lets address the elephant in the room: Search Party is essentially the same as Micro Macro Crime City. And that’s okay… Maybe? In fact, we didn’t need to read the rules because we were all so familiar with Micro Macro, we got the gist of this one immediately. But lets not dwell on the similarities, lets instead point out the differences:

Search Party is a 3D game, meaning you don’t just need to look top-down but you also look at the things ‘popping out’ of the playing board to find clues there.
Search Party is also family friendly… There’s no murder and crime here
Search Party also had an added bonus of a manual filled with fun ‘extra’ things to find and tick off. Kind of like those old Where’s Wally Books have a few pages at the end with cryptic clues of bonus things to find in each world. So does Search Party.

In these ways, Search Party brings something a little new than what Micro Macro offers. It’s a version of the genre that I’d be comfortable playing with my younger sibling or children in my friends/family group who can’t play Micro Macro due to all of the… Well… Slightly horrifying crime!

Somewhere in this there’s a conversation about copyright and ethics – for example, how close is a board game to another board game before it feels uncomfortable? I’m not a board game expert, I’m an escape room person, so I can’t really comment – but it is worth throwing it out there. Search Party is very, very similar. Therefore if Micro Macro isn’t right for you for any reason, and you want something more family focused, brighter, and a little sillier – this would make an excellent alternative.

The Verdict

Honestly? I did really enjoy the game! So did my co-players. We went in with absolutely no expectations – at the time of writing the game is very, very brand new and so there’s not much content available. So we weren’t sure, but we were ready to give it our all. The strengths of the game are absolutely in it’s presentation. It’s gorgeous. I love 3D environments and a 3D theme park is brilliant in it’s presentation and execution. It’s the kind of game you want to have out on display all year round.

The puzzles were a little too easy for our group, and as such we’d probably recommend this for a more family audience. I have the fondest memories of playing Where’s Wally as a child, pouring over the pages of a book, and this game took me right back. If you have kids and those kids enjoy Where’s Wally, then get them on this game right away, they’ll adore it for sure.

The only real negative was that we felt ever so slightly uncomfortable at how similar the game was to Micro Macro – but none of us felt like we really knew the board game landscape or genre well enough to comment. For all I know, there’s thousands of games just like this out there, but we’ve only come across Micro Macro. Who knows. It’s just tricky not to compare the two, and it’s even harder to compete with a game like Micro Macro which is world famous and has won countless awards. But I commend the creators for putting their own spin on the genre and making something refreshing and fun.

Search Party: Chaos at the Park can be purchased by heading to What Do You Meme’s website here.

Note: We were sent a complimentary copy of Chaos at the Park for review purposes, but this does not affect our review.

Turbo Button: Floor Plan 2 | Review

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Floor Plan 2 Review | A comedy adventure inspired by escape rooms, packed with more puzzles than you can fit in an elevator. On your first day of work, the boss sends you on an errand to retrieve a lost treasure that will turn the company’s fortunes around. And good news: it’s somewhere in the building! Just use the elevator down the hall. Oh, and by the way, each floor is a gateway to another world, nobody speaks your language, and time and space are fluid.

Developer: Turbo Button
Date Played: Summer 2022
Console: Oculus
Number of Players: 1
Time Taken: 6-8 hours

Listen, I LOVE Floor Plan 2.

That’s it. That’s the review. Stop what you’re doing, grab your VR headset and give it a download.

It’s one of those games that even though I finished months and months ago sometimes I just log into it for fun.

We’ve mentioned Floor Plan 2 in other posts, such as this one (which is somehow still our most read article on this whole website by a massive margin), but somehow it flew under our radar to write a full review until now.

So, full disclosure, we as The Escape Roomer were given a code to play. Unfortunately for personal reasons the specific reviewer who was assigned to the game wasn’t able to complete the review. The months rolled on and regrettably Floor Plan 2 slipped down in our priority list. Until one day I sat down and thought to myself – hey, I could really do with a fun escape room VR game right now. I DMed the original reviewer assigned, since they were one of the only other people I knew with a VR headset and passion for puzzles, and the name Floor Plan 2 came up. So I went off and purchased a copy.

So whilst this review isn’t comped exactly, this review was sparked by an “oh my god this game is so fun why haven’t we reviewed it yet” …”oh wait” moment. As such, it’s a completely honest and unbiased and perhaps a little over-excited verdict on Turbo Button’s Floor Plan 2. The verdict? It’s fantastic and I love it.

Are you ready to climb the corporate ladd- I mean, elevator?

So yes, I love this game, but equally I’d be lying if I said that some moments in this game didn’t frustrate me so much I wanted to virtually slap the stick of butter out of the strange little creatures’ hand and shout at my CEO. But good art should make you feel raw, visceral emotions, right? Which also brings me to the other big thing I wanted to say about this game: It’s comedy. It’s surreal. It’s mind-bendingly bizarre yet also so surprisingly recognisably corporate too.

It reminds me a lot of those point and click puzzle adventures from the 90s and 00s. You know the ones I mean – where you wander around locations picking up objects and combining them in surprising ways to create unimaginable outcomes all in the name of puzzle solving. Floor Plan 2 is similar in a way – you collect objects as you go, and then eventually you’ll find a use for the object – and it definitely won’t be how you expected it!

But this is where the puzzles get much more interesting than anything else we’ve encountered. Floor Plan 2 is in VR… So throw all your preconceived notions about how games work out the window. For starters, your mode of transport is an elevator (or lift, here in the UK) taking you between floors of a large sky scraper. Some objects can’t be taken in the elevator, so how are you supposed to get them to the floor above or below? Well there in lies one of the first big puzzles.

Okay… So it’s an office block? I get it.

Do you? Because I’m not sure I do! Because the things you find in the office block are bizarre. Try a nightclub chicken party. A bathroom that rotates 360 degrees. An ancient Egyptian tomb. Outer space. A bumblebee kingdom. It’s bright, it’s colourful, and it’s a joy to spend time in. Floor Plan 2 is playful in its environment design, and even more playful with it’s puzzles and absolutely nothing can be taken for granted. Not even gravity. For all of these reasons and more, I absolutely adore this game.

My favourite moment in the game is the moment that first sold me on the idea of the game. It’s you, you’re sitting behind a desk, and people come to you with their problems. They scoot up on chairs and express their issues to you in loud voices that sound like someone going “bleh bleh bleh” into the microphone. No shade, I think its hilarious. You with your little name badge and boring desk job solve their problems. After all, this is Puzzl Corporation, and your company’s motto is to solve any problem.

At some point, you get promoted and gain access to the elevators, and this is where the game ‘really’ begins. Cue all the bizarre gravity defying chickenery.

The puzzles themselves are a mixed bag in terms of difficulty. There are some real tricky moments where you’re pulling your hair out, and many other moments where you walk in and have a sense of exactly what you need to do. Overall I’d probably say it’s a little bit too tricky – for the light-hearted, almost childlike environment, there were a few times where I almost put my headset down and didn’t return. But the difficulty of the puzzles makes for a longer, and much more satisfying game when you do eventually solve it all.

In all, the base game lasts about 1-2 hours for the core game, but after which an “overtime” remixed version of the experience is unlocked in which players can explore freely and try out new versions of old puzzles. One of the things you can do in “overtime” is hunt for missing pets, scattered throughout the building. Doing this unlocks new hands you can try out. Yes – really. A “totally not painful procedure” where you stick your hands into a loud machine and your hands come out completely different…

Do with that information whatever you will, but I had a blast!

A Comfortable Ride in the Elevator?

As with all VR games, I like to mention comfort – because VR isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Floor Plan 2 gives the players a fixed position teleportation system. Since most of the game happens in the elevator, you’d do well to make space in your floor to move freely about the elevator – maybe 2×2 meters to be safe. Beyond this, when the elevators open you can teleport to a fixed space within the room outside. In this way, it’s one of the least nauseating games in VR, and very suitable for people prone to VR sickness. You could even play the game sitting down, if you wanted to.

Similarly, the graphics are bright and colourful but very simple shapes – so I never experienced any game breaking or lagging issues on my device (Oculus Quest 2). It runs smoothly, feels comfortable to play, and is a fun experience start to finish.

Floor Plan 2: Backside Story

So why am I writing this review now exactly? Well, at the time of writing Floor Plan 2 had just released a brand new, FREE upgrade called Backside Story.

When an ancient elevator awakens and the experts are busy, it’s up to you and the PuzzScouts to retrieve the lost treasures that lie within.

I already owned the game, so all I needed to do was hit update, pop my headset on, and I was immediately transported back into Puzzl Corporation. And yes, I immediately started grinning from ear to ear! I was BACK! Back in this wacky, ridiculous, wonderful world of Floor Plan 2 for all new puzzles in all new locations. In this upgrade, players are contacted by a member of the PuzzScouts who needs help. You’re sent into a brand new elevator in search of three specific items hidden across 6 new locations.

In the new locations, there’s a Dungeons and Dragons themed maze with wizards and knights, there’s a circus tent with definitely-rigged games to play, and there’s a cockroach hotel room of corridors and locked doors to be accessed. In all these three locations, the elevator now gives you the ability to go “behind the scenes” on them. These are new locations in and of themselves, and the key to success with these puzzles will be seamlessly interacting with the front – and the back of the same location to succeed.

If you don’t already own Floor Plan 2 and wanted to buy it, this upgrade will be available with your purchase. However be mindful that the game will now be slightly more expensive overall (just a $5 increase).

In any case, I really love that the developers added this in. It patches a lot of things from the base game including plenty of accessibility options, which I love, but more importantly it added a huge amount of gameplay for free. The addition added an extra hour or two onto the base game (or in my case, at least 3 because I got very very stuck on one particular moment and spent days faffing!) is no small feat! It’s not so common that developers finish a game, and then return and add more content to the game just because they want to make it an even better game, but I applaud them for it.

Floor Plan 2 (and Backside Story) – The Verdict

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but Floor Plan 2 is a world that is an absolute joy to spend time in. It’s like a cross between a classic escape room and a game like Job Simulator, but more fun than both of those. When people ask me what VR games I recommend, this one comes up again and again. For goofy silly fun, but actual brain-boggling puzzles that really make you scratch your head – or rather, scratch the top of your VR visor.

For the absolute silliness and bonkers attitude of this game, we’ve decided to award it the special “Fun Factor” badge – awarded to games which are extra fun to play. You can read more about our award badges here.

FUN FACTOR All games are fun, but look out for the Fun Factor badge on any review that goes all out on fun!

Floor Plan 2 is available on Oculus and Steam VR.

P.S. Whilst we did receive a copy for free, the reviewer in this case (me) is not the recipient of that free copy.

February Scissors: Reflection VR | Review

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Reflection is a Chinese VR puzzle game. The puzzle is innovative and unique. Players will challenge a multi-dimensional space created by the mirror, and use mirrors to solve puzzles by manipulating the world in mirror and enter it. Puzzles including Logic, Physics, Space, Time and so on.

Developer: February Scissors
Date Played: June 2023
Console: Oculus
Number of Players: 1
Time Taken: 3 hours

I first heard about Reflection back when it released on Steam in September 2022. At the time, I was dying to play it. But for some reason (and I’m still not sure why) my VR headset just doesn’t vibe with Steam. So unfortunately I had to wait until June 2023 to finally get my hands on a copy – and it was well worth the wait!

In truth, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from February Scissors’ new game, Reflection. They’re a very small, indie games development company out of China. I’m not overly familiar with Chinese puzzle games – I’ve never played any escape rooms (physical or digital) or even any Chinese tabletop games. I suppose this has a lot to do with the language barrier – but also that China has such a booming puzzle game market there’s almost no need to translate and export. Except this is why Reflection is so cool – it doesn’t use language in any way. Besides the occasional prompt on my VR headset to ‘pick up an item’, I don’t think a single word was uttered by any of the ‘characters’. Sure, there were plenty of landscape items with Chinese letters dotted around in the environment – carved into stone or on lanterns, but none of this needed to be translated. In a similar way, a lot of the communication in this game is done visually – you’re exploring temples, with mountains rising out of the mist around you. Everything felt intuitive – walking around, picking up objects, waving them and moving them around. It’s languageless, and yet I still feel like I understand the story that went into it.

A Reflective Genius

The concept is simple: Reflection is a puzzle game where you use mirrors to manipulate the physical world around you. The game begins fairly straightforward – although I’m embarrassed to admit that I found even the earliest levels in the game tricky enough as they were. Quickly though, as new mechanics are introduced, the game becomes more difficult. At some point I even found myself shifting gravity and dropping objects in a throwback to the video game Portal.

In all there are seven distinction sections of the game, each introducing a new mechanic and adding to the complexity. The first few are about mirrors, the third introduces the ability to change paintings around you, the fourth bends space and the fifth takes that even further by allowing you to flip the whole world upside down, in the sixth you play with the butterfly effect, and finally you can manipulate time. Pretty powerful for little old me, huh.

Is it difficult? Honestly? Yeah! I’m so used to puzzles that conform to the laws of physics that being placed into VR and told I can manipulate everything was hard. But it wasn’t insurmountably hard, and after a little pushing and pulling the edges of reality usually the puzzles slotted into place.

VR: Is it Comfortable?

If it weren’t already clear, Reflection is also a VR game, so rather than clicking a mouse, if you want to manipulate something – such as picking up an object or moving a mirror, you’ll do so in physical space around you. I played on my Oculus Quest 2, but I believe it’s also available on other VR headsets. In terms of controls and motion, I found it quite easy to use and fairly intuitive. When you’re holding a special lantern you can point and click to ‘teleport’ to any location. There’s quite a bit of turning your head around and stretching to look at something, but otherwise quite comfortable. That said, at some point I passed my headset to my partner – there was a really fun bow-and-arrow moment I wanted them to try – and being less familiar with VR, they said they found it gave them a slight bit of motion sickness. With that I’d probably rate it about 2/5 on the “this might make you feel ill” scale, with a VR rollercoaster at 5, and something like The Room (where you’re in a fixed position always) at 1.

With Reflection, you can jump in and out whenever you like. It’s broken up into mini-chapters, and whenever I left and came back it autosaved and took me back to the start of the mini-chapter I was on. So in general, I played this game in very short bursts – just a few levels at a time. On my lunch break, before I started work, whilst I waited for my partner to make us some lunch. For me, this felt like the perfect way to play it – in bitesized, satisfying puzzle pieces.

Reflection VR: The Verdict

I really enjoyed Reflection. We’re currently in this period of time where there aren’t a lot of exciting puzzle games out on the Oculus store (cue some angry people yelling in the background that there are). But all that to say, Reflection launched on Oculus at the perfect time where I was in limbo for a good puzzle VR game. It scratched that itch and gave me a thoroughly enjoyable couple of days of puzzle solving fun.

I’d recommend this game for anyone who wants something a little more gentle, relaxing, and slow-paced.

Reflection can be played on Oculus, or Steam. We played on Oculus!

We weren’t charged for the game but this does not influence our review in any way!

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.

Eleven Puzzles: Unsolved Case | Review

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A new lead turns up old doubts about an ‘Unsolved Case’. A trap, or a copycat killer? In this co-op puzzle game prequel to the award-winning Cryptic Killer series, put on your detective badges as you collaborate and communicate to crack the codes, solve the riddles, and catch the Cryptic Killer.

Date Played: April 2023
Number of Players: 2
Time Taken: 30 mins
Difficulty: Easy

Although we became very familiar with digital escape rooms over the course of the pandemic, it’s been a while since I’ve played one. Last year I covered “Parallel Lab” by Eleven Puzzles, and greatly enjoyed it, so when I saw they had just released a new (free!) game, I absolutely had to play it. This is actually the first part of a larger game set to be released soon, which is even more exciting!

The Premise

Much like their previous game, this game requires two players on separate devices. This game actually supports cross-device playing, which meant I was able to Skype my mum and play on my computer, while she used her iPad, which she is more used to than playing on a computer. Part of the reason I love the Eleven Puzzles games so much is their ease of play – you are not tied to what the other person is doing and are fairly free to roam and interact as you like, and the gameplay is pretty much just point and click, so no tricky key combinations to figure out – any difficulty is just about the puzzles themselves!

In ‘Unsolved Case’ we return to the partnership of Ally and Old Dog, who have just received a mysterious briefcase each in their own apartments. These apartments happen to be fairly similar, and hold all the clues needed to crack the case open…

The Puzzles

All the puzzles in this game require cooperation, not just one or two. However, they’re also unique and creative in the way they require this teamwork. Certain puzzles may require you to do the same thing, with different results, while others require the sharing the information. One thing I noted as we played was how well-balanced these puzzles were – I never felt like I was missing out on the ‘aha’ moments, and similarly didn’t feel I was encountering them all. If there was ever a puzzle where I felt my mum was having all the fun, there was soon to be a similar puzzle where the role was reversed (although different enough that it wasn’t a cut-and-paste).

example with minor spoiler

At one point there is a puzzle that required my mum to essentially work out a maze (I think), and all I did was click a button to go left, right or forward. However, there was also a similar puzzle where I had to figure out which ‘doors’ to open or close and all my mum had to do was click a button with specific colours on. It’s a great example of balancing the gameplay with similar experiences, without it feeling identical.

In fact, I thought a lot of the puzzles were really well done – they were all creative while still being logical, if not too simple. At each stage, there is a padlock to unlock the next part of the story, with icons clearly showing which puzzles to solve to find the numbers. This meant we knew what we were doing and worked our way through each, even directly affecting each other’s rooms while doing so, which was a really fun.

The Verdict

I really enjoyed playing this – the playability was easy, puzzles were fun and interesting and it’s got a neat, comic book style. It’s a shame it was so short, but as it’s free I think this is a minor point! I would also say it would’ve been nice if there were slightly more independent puzzles too, to make it slightly less linear and bring a little more freedom. Overall though this is a really fun game to play, especially if your teammate is long distance, and I can’t wait to play the full game when it’s released soon!

Unsolved Case is free to play, and available on Steam, Android or iOS.

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.

Breakin’: War on Horizon Alpha | Review

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War on Horizon Alpha Review | With the expansion of the human race on other planets, an oppressive regime has risen to power and instated a dictatorship on the Colonial Republic, the dreaded Alpha One faction. You and your team are part of a rebel alliance trying to overthrow the regime and reinstate democracy. A massive assault will take place on the Horizon Alpha space station, serving as the Alpha One headquarters, which aims to destroy it, thus sparking a revolution on all planets. Your mission is to infiltrate the station and deactivate the shields in time so that the assault may be successful. Without the shields down, the entire offensive will become a suicide mission. Good luck, you are the galaxy’s only hope!

Date Played: June 2022
Time Taken: 55 minutes
Number of Players: 2
Difficulty: Medium

It’s official! I’ve now played every single escape room at Breakin’. Which is why I can safely say that War on Horizon Alpha is the most “meh”. Don’t get me wrong, I love a sci-fi theme. Even more love for a sci-fi theme that’s clearly inspired by Star Wars. But there was something about this one that didn’t just click for us. A little tired, a little broken, and more than a few puzzles that I’m still not sure I understand even now, weeks after playing. That’s okay, not every room is for every person. I preferred Wizarding School or Heist Plan, but you might prefer this one.

Never Underestimate a Droid

The first thing you’ll notice when you walk into War on Horizon Alpha is an enormous R2D2. Or should I call it the IP skirting D2R2? Haha. The second thing you’ll notice is a huge amount of buttons. War on Horizon Alpha is a single-room escape room so pretty much everything you’ll interact with is right in front of you and it’s… A lot! There’s an enormous panel of buttons and screens and 99.9% of the buttons do absolutely nothing and there’s not much to indicate which are the ones you’ll need and which aren’t. Oh dear!

But, once the first hurdle of figuring out where to start (which we ended up spending our first clue on 10 minutes in), we were off to a flying start! As with most Breakin’ rooms, this one was fairly linear which suited our team of 2 quite well. We worked together on everything and progressed at a steady pace through the spaceship.

The cool thing about the room was the sci-fi vibe of it. It was a bit of a tight space but it was also clear a lot of care and attention to detail had gone into the set once upon a time, which by now is the good quality set design I expect from Breakin’. They know how to make a good atmosphere. Think neon glowing lights and blinking buttons and a fun musical track that ramped up in excitement as we headed towards the climax of the game.

We asked for a record breaking number of clues and many more of those clues either led to puzzles that were broken or things we found so illogical we had to be given the answers for them. We also wasted a good 20 or so of our minutes ‘solving’ a puzzle that was on full display but wouldn’t actually activate something until the very end of the game. So when we then got to the end we looked up at the camera like “we’ve already done this please don’t make us do it again“.

Once our GM had taken pity on us and given us the final answer, the game came to an abrupt halt and our host appeared to ask how we found it. We asked a million and one questions about all the things that didn’t make sense (there were a lot), had our photo taken, and were hurried out of the building without so much of a goodbye. It wasn’t the usual Breakin’ experience I’m used to, but everyone has an off day and every room loses it’s magic eventually.

The Verdict

Overall, not my favourite room. Lost points for puzzles and general wear and tear, but earns points for a fun sci-fi theme. I felt a little bad about it as we booked this room for my birthday and as one of the final rooms to play in London before moving out of the city. But as I say not every room will click with every team and that’s just the luck of the draw when you try a new room!

If you love Star Wars and sci-fi themes and a particular style of puzzle, you’ll probably love this. We’d loved everything else at Breakin’ so far, but this one was a miss for us. So if you do book this room, be sure to book a couple of others at Breakin’ at the same time to experience the full magic the company has to offer!

War on Horizon Alpha can be played by booking on Breakin’s website here.

ESC WELT: House of the Dragon | Review

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House of the Dragon Review | An aging Japanese carpenter felt abandoned by his son who had left home and started a family of his own. But when a dragon came to the carpenter in his dreams and told him he still had time to bond with the grandchildren he’d never seen, the carpenter designed and built a wooden toy. The toy was a puzzle box that children alone couldn’t open so children, parents and grandparents worked together to solve the mystery of the ‘House of the Dragon’.

Date played: May 2022
Time taken: 60-90 mins
Number of players: 1
Difficulty: Medium

Puzzle Box Joy

First up, I love wooden puzzle boxes. They are beautiful little works of art. I had a money box as a kid that was a simplified puzzle box with panels that you had to slide around to find a hidden drawer with a key, then do some more sliding to find the keyhole. I loved it, even when I’d done that sliding so many times it was no longer a puzzle. I guess that was when the ER bug first bit, even though there was no such thing as ERs at the time. It also explains the little jolt of joy I get in ERs like those by ‘Escape Plan’ where they use cute little wooden puzzle boxes in place of the ubiquitous padlocks. So much of the pleasure I get from ERs is that they are safe spaces for adults to indulge in childlike play and I guess wooden puzzle boxes are a direct, visceral link between adult me and the little kid I once was.

Which is a very long winded and philosophical path to saying that when EscWelt asked us to review their latest puzzle, House of the Dragon, I jumped at the chance. I hadn’t played an EscWelt game box before, though had taken on similar puzzles by iAdventure, so was excited to unbox it.

Handmade Heaven

‘House of the Dragon’ looks and feels lovingly hand-made, a fact confirmed by a signed slip inside the box from the EscWelt bod who put it together. In keeping with the Japanese theming and narrative, with the back story laid out on a paper insert, the puzzle box takes the form of a miniature pagoda, crafted from sustainable birchwood. There’s lovely carved detailing and beautiful etching on every side, with cherry blossom tumbling down one side, and a dragon wrapped around the roof. Each side and each section has a unique design and feel and a quick scan around the box gives you the sense of multiple puzzle elements.

But Where Do I Start?

But that’s where I came a bit unstuck. The iAdventure games I’d played previously had a handy ‘start’ etched somewhere on them to give you a clue where to begin. ‘House of the Dragon’ doesn’t. It’s clearly designed to be trickier and that’s no bad thing but it can also lead to frustration. Maybe because I’m singularly dense, or maybe because I was playing alone, with no-one to bounce ideas off, I just couldn’t spot an obvious ‘way in’ to the sequence of puzzles. So I spent a lot of time just turning the box around and around in my hands trying to get an insight into where to start. Which is ok for a while but my patience did erode fairly quickly.

Let It Flow

Eventually after a bit of wiggling of box parts, I made the first step and after that things flowed a little more, although you still have to be a bit experimental and willing to try some random poking around, in some cases literally. After the first element was solved and I’d done a bit of Japanese language translation, I realised I was looking for a specific sequence (of what I won’t say coz spoilers). And from then on, the puzzle flow around the box was more satisfying and fairly slick. Constrained by the size of the box, there aren’t a huge number of puzzle elements and I probably took longer figuring out where to start than I did actually solving it all but the sheer physicality of the puzzling is very satisfying. And, like in any good ER, the revelation at the end is worth all the effort that preceded it.

The Verdict?

My minor niggles would be that lack of a clearing start point and the fact that the playability of the box is impacted by some parts being too stiff and some too lose. In some case parts don’t move easily, meaning you feel like you haven’t solved that element when you actually have. Some parts also move but have no function other than looking pretty. On my box the roof element rotated so I spent ages thinking there must be a significance to that. But there wasn’t.

However, these are minor issues in a puzzle box that is beautiful to behold. The tactile physicality of the box is the true selling point. When you can’t get hands on with an ER out in the real world, and online or paper ER type games just aren’t hitting the right spot then a puzzle box like ‘House of the Dragon’ is a treat. Sliding panels, buttons to push and pull, secret doors and secret codes. All in the comfort of your own home.

There’s a QR code system to get access to EscWelt’s tips and hints on the puzzle box and once you’re done and found out the secret at the heart of the labyrinth, there’s also a resetting video so you can play again or pass the box on to someone else. Maybe you could even hide a little treat inside and see how long it takes someone else to get inside ‘The House of the Dragon’.

‘House of the Dragon’ and other puzzle box games from EscWelt can be bought at their online store or at other online retailers.

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