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Mystery Mansion Regina: The Detective’s Office (Point-and-Click) | Review

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The Detective’s Office (Point-and-Click) Review | In 1951, Private Investigator Rick Murphy was investigating a case involving a stolen priceless necklace. Suddenly, Rick vanished without a trace. Step into his office and uncover what happened to him.

Date Played: May 2022
Number of Players: 4
Time Taken: 41 minutes
Difficulty: Medium

Even though the world has pretty much returned back to ‘normal’ when it comes to going in person and playing physical escape rooms, I get a little excited when a company located somewhere all the way on the other side of the world releases a new digital escape game. Even better when it’s Mystery Mansion Regina (a company we already absolutely love), and a physical room that’s well-loved by enthusiasts in Canada. For that brief hour at my computer screen with Al, Ash and Tasha, we get to be transported into the physical location in Regina, ready to help crack an old cold case, a stolen necklace, and a vanished private investigator. I love it!

 

Photo (c) Mystery Mansion Regina

 

About The Detective’s Office

The Detectives Office is actually a prequel to another in-person game at Mystery Mansion Regina: The Adventurer’s Club, and is also based at their brick and mortar site in Regina. Usually for 6-8 players max, the online version is built with Telescape and allows you to host up to 10 players, or even more if you wanted to split across multiple play sessions. As with other Telescape games, the Detective’s Office has been faithfully recreated with a 360 degree camera meaning you can click around the explore the environment as if physically there.

Throughout the experience you’ll see the other players on your team moving around with their cursor. Or in our case, clicking frantically on everything. Which is a good note for this game – be sure to click on absolutely everything, as everything interactable is relevant! Also unlike the physical escape room, we had access to a folder titled “Investigation Resources” which we could check at any time. This contained all the objects we’d discovered so far on our investigation – old photographs, newspaper clippings, and scraps of paper with cryptic clues on them.

In terms of the physical space, it’s about what you’d expect from a 1950s detective’s office. It’s dimly lit, has a large ‘investigation board’ mounted on the wall, and is packed with vintage furniture like old lamps, typewriters and briefcases to be unlocked. As we explored further we discovered hidden hiding spots, false walls and plenty of locks hiding secrets inside drawers and boxes dotted around too. After all, this is not just a simple stolen necklace case anymore – it’s also a missing person case. So finding out everything we possibly could about the investigator himself was paramount to the success of our own investigation.

 

 

Can you Crack the Case?

Now, onto the puzzles! I really enjoyed playing the puzzles in The Detective’s Office. Creatively well themed to the environment and almost always involved searching and finding hidden details and secret spaces.

As a whole, the experience is anchored around the investigation board where you have a number of suspects and details about them. As the game progresses you add in more details about the suspects you find, pinning them to the board each time until a complete picture of the crime is formed. They’re a shifty looking bunch of people and one of them surely committed the crime. But who? That’s for you to find out!

I also enjoyed the wealth of locks we uncovered. No, no, this isn’t just your keys and padlocks – there were 3 and 4 digit codes, as well as push-pin padlocks, and fun turn left, turn right dials that clicked open satisfyingly when we completed them. When a lock did pop open, a small video of that action happening in real life played for all of us, providing a fun positive feedback loop of confirmation of our success. That’s a rather technical way of saying it was fun seeing our pre-recorded ‘Games Master’ performing the actions in our place! A nice touch to bring the room to life and remind you it’s a physical space.

 

 

The Verdict

The Detective’s Office is a fun little game that you can play digitally from anywhere in the world for a fraction of the price of the in-person physical room. We really enjoyed playing it – it’s high quality and enjoyable, something we expect from all Mystery Mansion Regina experiences by now. Furthermore, we also got this game at a discount cost as they were running a special promotional weekend for it, and so the value for money for us at least was absolutely exceptional.

I’d recommend The Detectives Office for anyone looking for an escape room to play from home. If you can get to the real, physical room, then why not? But if you can’t, this is a great second-best option for enthusiasts and regular players alike.

 

The Detective’s Office can be booked to play any time by heading to their website here.

E-Scape Rooms: Detention | Review

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E-Scape Rooms Detention Review | Your behaviour was unacceptable. Detention will teach you a lesson one way or another. It is up to you whether you stay here for the whole day or you can leave if you prove to be smart enough within the hour.

Completion Time: ~1 hour
Date Played: January 2022
Party Size: 4
Difficulty: Medium

About once a week, Al, Ash, our friend Tasha and myself like to meet up to play an online escape room together. This far into (or should I say ‘past’ at this point) lockdown, we’ve played hundreds. One of our favourite companies is E-Scape, creators of the fantastic The Alp and Sword of Drakul. But, stepping away from their fantastical and horror themed genres of the other two games, Detention is far more grounded in reality. It is set in a school. Your mission: Escape detention!

 

Back to School

Ever have nightmares where you’re suddenly back in school and you haven’t done your homework, or you have an exam to complete with no revision, or you’re due to give a presentation in front of the whole school but you’ve misplaced your trousers? No? Just me? Haha. Well the escape room “Detention” is kinda like all my school-related anxiety dreams rolled into one. I’m locked in a room at school and it’s packed with puzzled themed around various school subjects: Science, Maths, English, History and so on. If I can’t escape in time, I’ll be trapped in there… Maybe forever!

The room unfolds in a very non-linear fashion and, being built in Telescape, meant that all of the four of us could click around to take a closer look at anything in any order. Whilst it’s just one large, limited space of a detention room complete with desks, chairs, and a large chalkboard up at the front, it’s anything but small. We found that there were a huge amount of puzzles to grapple with in the experience. It was one of those rooms that probably no single one of us engaged with and solved every single puzzle, but we worked together in tandem towards a collective goal, breaking off into teams of two to work collaboratively on one or the other.

 

 

As with many Telescape games, during the gameplay you can see your fellow puzzlers’ cursor marks to see what they’re working on. It works well, as there are a number of magnifying glasses dotted around the physical space so you know exactly what you can and can’t click into and at any time in the sidebar you can see where others are. So when Al or Ash say “hey come look at this”, the software makes it easy to jump right to them. To input a code, you have a box at the bottom of your screen at any time to type letters and numbers in. This often triggered something to happen in the game, such as adding an object to our inventory or opening a lock.

Of the puzzles I encountered myself, I enjoyed them a lot. There were some that involved periodic tables, maps of our solar system, strange symbols on the walls, flags of the world, a large skeleton, hacking into our teacher’s computer, and so on. I’d rate the room at around a ‘medium’ difficulty and I’d definitely be lying if I said we weren’t stuck at all. Quite the contrary, several puzzles took us many tries to complete and one or two clues, but we got there in the end… And most importantly, we had a lot of fun in the process.

One thing E-Scape Rooms does really well is it’s ability to create drama. Completing puzzles often resulted in short, animated cut scenes that swept around the room in dramatic fashion. Every game they’ve made so far has been 3D modelled and inserted into Telescape creatively. Quite literally, the team are creating rich environments out of thin air, and as a hobbyist 3D modeller I am here for it and I love it. I mean, have you seen how shiny the floor is in this room? So nicely modelled! I need them to hook me up with those cool textures.

 

 

The Verdict

Detention is your classic play-at-home escape room from E-Scape rooms and although it’s not as magical as the fantastic The Alp and Sword of Drakul, it holds its own in the genre as a fun space packed with enjoyable puzzles to solve collaboratively with friends. Since lockdown has ended, I still appreciate games like this being made and put on the market as a way to stay connected with friends who don’t live in the same city as me. Detention is a perfect game like that and would be excellent for friends, family or just about anyone to play together.

 

Detention can be booked by heading to E-Scape’s website here.

Online Escape Rooms Ireland: Spirit Seekers – The Dullahan | Review

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The Dullahan Review | The Dullahan was the original “Headless Horseman”, and not the cute pumpkin-headed variety from the Disney movie!  The Dullahan is a grotesque and horrible creature who claims souls (kills people).  He carries a whip made from a human spine and he uses it to blind anyone who sees him (gross!).  Can you find a way to rid the village of the Dullahan before he returns at nightfall?

Date Played: 13th March 2022
Number of Players: 4
Time Taken: 35:40
Difficulty: Medium

Online Escape Rooms Ireland is one of those companies that when I hear they’ve announced a new game, I’m first in the digital queue to play. When we first got out hands on a link, an ill-timed holiday meant we had to push playing back a few weeks, but it was well worth the wait. The Dullahan is another fantastic instalment in the Spirit Seekers series and one that is even better than the first.

About Spirit Seekers Ireland

Spirit Seekers Ireland is a series of escape rooms from the creative duo Connor and Sarah of Online Escape Rooms Ireland and their physical site, Escape Rooms Shannon whose video on their About Us page is one of my favourite things on the internet. The idea behind Spirit Seekers Ireland was to pay respectful homage to local landmarks and legends of interest in Ireland through the medium of escape rooms. You play as ghost hunters sent to explore a number of real life locations through the interface (Telescape) and… You guessed it… Catch ghosts!

In The Clare Abbey, you explore a church which is riddled with various ghosts. Armed with a ghost hunting kit and various tools (EMPs, audio recorders etc.) you must catch evidence of ghosts on camera. In this game, The Dullahan, the experience takes a slightly creepier turn as you’re in hunt of a very specific local legend: a Dullahan.

The Dullahan *Shudders*

According to local legend, a Dullahan is essentially a headless horsemen – the kind you see across cultures and ghost stories for centuries. What makes him unique to Ireland is the myth that he uses a whip made of the spine of humans as a weapon, and that he can claim people’s souls by calling out their name. It’s said that when the dullahan stops riding, a person will die.

So it’s no surprise that we needed to stop this once and for all, we can’t have any more people dying in this village, so team Al, Ash, Tasha and myself were put on the case to catch him. If we needed any help we could consult the SALMON OF KNOWLEDGE (love it!). He’s cute, but he’s only there for emergencies.

“OMG! I’ve found a pig”

…A statement I think I said several times whilst playing this game because of how excited I was to whip the 360 degree camera around and come face to face with a sweet little piggie.

But jokes aside, The Dullahan is a great game that takes place on Telescape – meaning you’ve a 360 view of a number of locations and a map you can use to guide yourselves through the game. What I loved about this was that it really is based on a real location and one I kinda want to visit myself if I’m ever in the area just for how quaint the cobbled paths and dry stone walling is. We explored the church ruins and cemetery, a stone cottage, a white cottage, a school, a pig sty, a blacksmith and a caravan – each place more delightful and fun to explore than the previous.

In terms of puzzles, The Dullahan isn’t perfect, no – I always take some small issue with found puzzles (of which there were a few), mainly because I never ever remember to bring my headphones along to a digital escape room and tend to spend the whole thing muted. This game was no different and we encountered several sound-based puzzles which I handed the reigns over to Al & Ash to solve in tandem.

But whatever issue I have with sound puzzles, it’s all but made up by how much fun the puzzles were to solve overall. In my opinion, Online Escape Rooms Ireland does “fun” very well and it’s always a joy to hear they’ve a new escape room experience launched. Players can expect to encounter typical escape room puzzles such as digit codes, moving options to make patterns, listening to sounds and translating them, some cool ciphers, matching puzzles and so on. Nothing breaks the mould but that’s okay.

The Verdict

Another really sold escape room experience from Online Escape Rooms Ireland, and another nail in my “I really want to visit this part of the world post-pandemic” coffin. Despite the ghostly and supernatural themes, this wasn’t a scary game in the slightest. There are some spooky vibes, but I don’t think particularly young players would be put off. Most young people I know would love the idea of a whip made of bones… Me though? *shudder*

Accessibility Notes: In terms of accessibility, as there are some sound puzzles you’ll need one person who is able to hear clearly, but to my best knowledge there aren’t any other accessibility flags to raise at this stage.

We’d recommend this experience for just about anyone but particularly folks who want to engage with beautiful places in Ireland and local Irish folklore through the medium of puzzles. Through brilliant games like this I’m learning more about the folklore of my own near-ancestral home, but I think I’ll probably make my granny shriek if I start talking about dullahan over our next tea party.

The Dullahan can be booked by heading to Online Escape Rooms Ireland’s website here.

Hourglass Escapes: NOVA | Review

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Hourglass Escapes NOVA Review | Greetings, crew. Our mission is in great danger. An asteroid storm has disabled our ship–but worse, it damaged the automated drop ship that was delivering the Nova seed. The Nova Seed is needed to terraform Khepri 5, the future home planet of what’s left of humanity! Work together to restore power to your vessel, find the crashed Nova drop ship, and deliver the seed!

Completion Time: 22 minutes
Date Played: 10th February 2022
Party Size: 4
Difficulty: Easy

Hourglass Escapes across the pond in Seattle is one of those companies I will literally never stop recommending. From their consistently high quality digital games, to how much fun we have with our host (usually the owner Seth) each time. Their Evil Dead 2 room was easily one of our highlights of 2021!

So whenever we hear that Hourglass Escape is releasing a new game, you bet we’re first in the virtual queue!

This month the Hourglass Escapes team announced a new ‘play any time’ sci-fi game game: NOVA. In a similar vein to The Navigators and the Call From Beyond, up to 6 players all log on and are immediately transported across the farthest reaches of the galaxy. Our mission, simple! We’re here to rescue the legendary Nova Seed needed to terraform humanity’s new planet. So err, no pressure!

Let’s go where no man has gone before…

Disclaimer, I am a huge sci-fi fan. There’s a reason my username is mairispaceship (that reason being that at the age of 7 I accidentally legally gave myself the middle name “spaceship” but that’s a story for another time). But for this sci-fi loving reason, I’m a big fan of the story of NOVA. It’s probably my favourite thing about the game.

Not a lot of details are given. All we really know is that it’s set in the far future on a spaceship that’s in peril. Cut to sweeping views of your shuttle ship which looks like a cross between The Expanse and Star Trek, and it well and truly affirms your place in the great unknown universe.

Impressive Production Value

I don’t know why on Earth I’m surprised given their track record, but let me just say it again: NOVA had an incredible production value! It was almost like they’d built an entire spaceship from scratch complete with many rooms, hidden passages, and beautiful sweeping views of the cosmos. Walking around- or rather, pointing and clicking in the handy Telescape platform– felt much more like we were playing a multiplayer video game than playing a simple, browser-based escape room.

As a video game designer for my day job – I appreciate that a lot! But it’s also great to see how much love and care the designers have put into the world building. Kudos!

On the topic of ‘Telescape’, the in-browser technology has improved since we last played another point-and-click at Hourglass Escapes. This time our video chat was inbuilt into the system (hooray! No more Facebook or WhatsApp calls in the background!). This ‘Jitsi’ plugin meant that we could see each other and hear each other from within the browser at all times.

One Small Step For Man…

In terms of puzzles, we found NOVA to be quite easy. According to the playtesting, most teams take around 60 minutes to complete, with enthusiast groups coming in around 40.

*pause*

We took 22 minutes!

But I can explain – NOVA is a very non-linear, collaborative game. In each new area you reach there are a number of panels and screens dotted around, each with their own puzzle. With our team of 4 we immediately got into a rhythm of splitting up and solving in parallel. So whereas a room with 4 unique puzzles may easily take 20 minutes (5 minutes each or more), we all solved about one each and raced through each room in no time.

The flip side to that was that we didn’t all experience the same puzzles, which is a downside because the ones I did were a lot of fun and what can I say? I want more!

Each of the puzzles I did encounter all felt very mimetic in the sci-fi universe they’ve created. In short, exactly the kinds of things you would be expected to do on a space ship. Reading radio wave read outs, flicking switches and rewiring the hardware, analysing chemicals, and so on. Nothing challenged us for more than a minute or two and overall – the whole thing felt fun to solve! So no complaints on the difficulty here.

The Verdict

NOVA is another really solid game from Hourglass Escapes and one I’ll definitely be recommending. It’s probably not my favourite game from the company. No, that award goes to Rise of the Mad Pharaoh, but it’s still an all round fun experience with a lot of snazzy graphics and unique puzzles. Those puzzles probably won’t challenge a larger team, but for a beginner room it’s spot on, so definitely one to introduce to your Puggle (puzzle muggle) friends.

NOVA can be purchased and played at any time from Hourglass Escape’s website here.

Sara Lee Trust: The Detectives That Saved Christmas! | Review

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The Detectives That Saved Christmas Review | The elves radio beacon is in the shape of a star and when the time has come, they climb the tallest Christmas tree they can find, place the star at the top and await the reindeer. The elves stored the star in the community centre but when, after the twelfth week in Great Snoring they went to pick it up it was gone. Only a dozen people have a key to the community center and as there were no signs of a break in it must have been taken by one of them.

After comparing the naughty list with the list of key holders the elves have made a list of the 6 suspects. Can you help the elves find their star? Pull yourselves together and walk a mile in their pointy shoes!

Completion Time: 20 minutes
Date Played: 28th November 2021
Party Size: 1
Difficulty: Easy

This time last year Play Helps in partnership with the Sara Lee Trust released a charity escape game for Christmas: The Detectives that Saved Christmas! I was slightly gutted to have missed it- I mean, I’m a little bit obsessed with Christmas. It’s totally normal to be updating The Escape Roomer in a Santa hat in November, right? Anyway…

I was very excited to hear that this game is making a comeback this year – bigger and better than ever, 100% of the proceeds for the game go directly to charity. Wahey! Take my money!

There’s something a little magical about doing what I love – playing escape rooms – and knowing you’re doing it for good and the money you spent is going to a really, really good cause. The Sara Lee Trust are a local charity in Hastings that look after those affected by cancer. The charity was chosen after the game’s designer (Shaun Shrubsall) was helped by them, and it’s his way of giving back!

For this reason, we are generally very favourable about the game because we believe as many people as possible should go out and purchase it. For sure, your average enthusiast will not be challenged by it – as it’s not a difficult game at all – but look at it this way: Since it’s got such a family focus and a wide market appeal, this could be just the game to introduce to your puggle (puzzle muggle) friends to get them hooked on whodunnits.

About The Detectives That Saved Christmas

The Detectives That Saved Christmas is a classic whodunnit game. Rather than being in a physical room, the game is played looking top-down at a table with all the suspects and the evidence spilled out upon it. Since the game was built in Telescape, I’m used to 360 views of rooms, so it was really creative to see the escape game platform used in a different way.

Your goal is simple: find the elf that did the crime. This can be done by eliminating each of the elves’ alibis. Six elves and one crime committed in the sleepy town of Great Snoring. You start the game with just the descriptions of the elves, and as time ticks along more and more evidence appears on your desk. Each time a new piece of evidence appears, a little jingle bell sounds. The first time this happened I had my volume set to maximum and nearly screamed. The second and third time was a lot more gentle and festive! As each piece of evidence appears, you can click and drag them to each relevant elf and mark their portraits with a cross to eliminate them or a tick if you think they’re the culprits.

A Winter Whodunnit

In terms of pure puzzles – there aren’t a lot, as this game’s beauty is in logical deduction. If this, then that, which means that elf could not have done it. However I did particularly enjoy using a lot of maths to calculate the exact timings to figure out whether it was technically possible if an elf could have driven to the crime scene in time. Thankfully you’re provided with Google maps, but I like to whip out the calculator too!

It’s not particularly challenging, but I reckon that in a bigger group there’d be a lot of fun debate. This game is nothing if not fun, and when it’s not packed with hilarious elf puns and light hearted jokes, it causes you to question and chat out loud about what you’re solving. In short: making it a perfect family game to get everyone involved in.

Another of my favourite parts was at the very end of the game. once you’ve made your choice, the time skips forward and the credits roll with a funny “where are they now” montage of all the suspects you didn’t chose as the criminals. In a silly kind of way, I was very emotionally invested in these elves and was glad to see they all lived happily ever after… Well, perhaps not all of them.

The Verdict

The Detectives That Saved Christmas is fun, but don’t expect the world of it. After all, its’s a game designed for mass market appeal, to bring the family together – wherever they are in the world – to solve a Christmas mystery. Any game where the proceeds go towards charity is worth grabbing a ticket for!

Play The Detectives That Saved Christmas here.

Ratings

Online Escape Rooms Ireland: Santa’s Sleighcation | Review

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Santa’s Sleighcation Review | Everyone needs a break from time to time, and Santa is no exception. It has been a very busy year, and Santa is taking a little holiday to restore his energy for Christmas Eve. But Santa enjoyed the sunshine so much, that he decided not to return to the North Pole for Christmas! He told the elves to deliver the presents themselves this year. But… Santa has the keys to the Magic Sleigh with him! No one can deliver that many presents on Christmas Eve without the Magic Sleigh!​

Completion Time: 30 minutes
Date Played: 27th November 2021
Party Size: 4
Difficulty: Easier

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas… Oh yes! One of my favourite times of the year. Made all the better for all the festive escape rooms that pop up around this time. Which is why when we heard Online Escape Rooms Ireland had made a Christmas game, we couldn’t wait to get cracking on it!

With the Christmas tree up earlier in the day, Escaping the Closet, our friend Tasha and myself logged in to try and see if we could save Christmas.

A Summer Santa

Santa’s Sleighcation isn’t your typical Christmas game. There’s no snow in sight. Instead it’s set in somewhere hot and tropical like Barbados. Santa has been on holiday and doesn’t want to return, so it was up to us to find the keys to the sleigh. I think a fair few of the decorations may have been borrowed from Online Escape Rooms Ireland’s other room, Beach Bar, but it worked so well! More margaritas anyone?

As with many of the company’s other escape room experiences, Santa’s Sleighcation is based on a real life physical space at their site. With the use of a 360 camera, the creators have digitalised the space so that anyone from anywhere in the world can play it. The best part is it’s built in Telescape so you’ve got a 360 degree view of all the rooms, can see all your fellow player’s mouse points on the screen, and work together collaboratively.

Since the theme of the game is Christmas in a hot tropical climate, there’s a real mix to the decor. Tiki bars decorated with tinsel and baubles and a shining tree in the corner next to a couple of flamingos and talking parrots. I was also particularly tickled to find that Santa would be wearing a brightly coloured Hawaiian shirt!

Crack the Codes, not the Coconuts

Santa’s Sleighcation is adapted from a real life room and therefore those playing the digital version can enjoy a very tactile feel to the game. There’s plenty for a large team to get on with – we felt that us at 4 players was the sweet spot for everyone to be busy. You’ll encounter padlocks and 3 and 4 digit codes, and plenty of times will find yourself running- I mean, clicking your way across the room to cross-reference objects. There’s a handy inventory system to keep track of what items you still need to use. And, conveniently, objects will disappear when you’ve completed them.

Our favourite thing about digital games from Online Escape Rooms Ireland has to be the intro and outro video however. They are simple videos, but the stock videos of different Santa’s doing increasingly bizarre things always makes us laugh. It’s also always nice to be reminded, with a message from the creators, that by playing their games you are supporting local businesses. Dare I say it one of the only good things to come out of lockdown is the emergence of digital escape games – I can now enjoy real life rooms from exciting places around the world from my rainy flat in London (thanks lockdown travel ban!).

The Verdict

Overall, Santa’s Sleighcation is a really fun, lighthearted game. We completed it in just under 30 minutes and found it on the slightly easier side, compared to for example Spirit Seekers Ireland but I’m a big believer in not overdoing it at Christmas. So, I like it a lot. If you’re three boozy hot chocolates in and there’s a festive film in the background, this game would be a fantastic respite that’ll scratch that escape room itch over the festive period but not leave you bamboozled hours.

Santa’s Sleighcation can be booked from Online Escape Rooms Ireland’s website here.

Ratings

Great Scott Escapes: Who Killed Bugsy Marlowe | Review

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Who Killed Bugsy Marlowe Review | It is 1937. Late this afternoon Bugsy Marlowe came to the Dunwich Tower Hotel for reasons that are still unclear. He was standing in the lobby chatting with some associates when the elevator door opened. No one got out.  A few seconds later as the elevator door began to close, someone fired a gun from inside the elevator car. The bullet hit Bugsy in the head, killing him instantly.

Everyone in the lobby ducked and ran for cover. the elevator, now closed, had begun moving once again. Several witnesses reported seeing the elevator lights stopping on the fifth floor. Hotel staff immediately disabled the elevator, sealed off the staircases and called the police. The killer was now trapped on the fifth floor. The police arrived at the hotel and immediately began their investigation of the crime scene. Several detectives were then directed to the fifth floor where five guests were staying, each in separate rooms. All five guests were taken to the police station for questioning.

One of them is the killer. Can you figure out who done it?

Completion Time: 1 hour 17 minutes
Date Played: 21st October 2021
Party Size: 3

When it’s my turn at work to pick the office social activity, you best believe I’m choosing an escape room every time! But it’s always a little tricky to ensure it’ll be one I haven’t played, not too enthusiast-focused, and still be fantastic. To make sure I had all those boxes ticked, I asked my friends at Review the Room whether they recommended Bugsy Marlowe – a room that came out quite early in the pandemic but still consistently got good reviews – and received a resoundingly positive yes in reply! Fantastic – Bugsy Marlowe was booked!

It then took a few more weeks to get all my colleagues in the same place at the same time for us to actually play the game, but it was well worth the wait when we did!

Detective, I have a case for you

The point and click, non-hosted version of Who Killed Bugsy Marlowe opens with a 1920s style noire video all in sepia colours of your detective filling you in on the case. He gives you a smouldering look and stares into the distance as he ponders the suspects. Thankfully, he has nothing to worry about because we had our very best on the case – our director, our developer, and well, me.

Originally, this is a real life escape room by Great Scott Escapes in Pennsylvania, USA. Thanks to the global pandemic, the team converted it to a digital format. You could either load the game up in a platform called Telescape, or book a Games Master to guide you through it as a live video escape room. We opted for the point-and-click Telescape version because being on this side of the pond makes it hard to organise a time together.

In Telescape, you get a 360 degree view of all of the physical spaces and can click into anything for a closer look. When you hover over items of importance, they flash up with a magnifying glass icon, encouraging you to look closer. There was also audio, video, and plenty of fun multimedia moments that added to the immersion of the game – so we don’t feel like we suffered anything going for the less expensive point-and-click version.

Catch the Culprit, Close the Case

In terms of gameplay, Who Killed Bugsy Marlowe is a really unique escape room. Namely because the goal of the game isn’t to escape – it’s to find the suspect. In a Cluedo-esque logic grid, you’re presented with 5 suspects, 5 drinks, 5 weapons, 5 rooms and 5 countries of origins. As you explore the room you’ll uncover evidence that will connect these pieces of information and eventually be the key to cracking he case.

To help you out, on one of the walls in the first space is a very large logic board with each piece of information on a draggable image. It’s advised that every time you receive a new piece of information, such as Mr. Smith likes to drink orange juice (he doesn’t, it’s just for illustrative purposes), that you rush over and log the information on the board.

When we played, we must have missed something because we got something wrong. I think this comes with a lot of players working together and perhaps moving and changing things on the board, but we reached the final puzzle of the game and thought “oops, that can’t be right”. Thankfully, the game is merciful and doesn’t punish you for taking too long. We were able to clear the board and try again!

Right or wrong, we had a lot of fun cracking the case though. The puzzles, for once, felt truly quite mimetic – meaning they fit so well in their environment it made sense that doors would be locked and you’d need to uncover the maid’s key card first, and so on. Every time one of us found an item it added to everyone’s inventory so we could all play along at the same time. There’s something extra exciting about digging around in people’s private rooms to evidence and I love a good murder mystery. This certainly is a good murder mystery!

For sure, there is a lot to find. Compared to other escape rooms of the same length, I think there is at least double the average number of hot spots to click on. Attention is key, else you’ll lose track of what you’ve found so far.

The Verdict

Whenever I play really good digital/at home games that are adapted from real life rooms, I feel a little sad that I’ll never be able to play in person – but Who Killed Bugsy Marlowe doesn’t make me feel that way because it so beautifully translates to the digital format, I feel as if nothing is lost from the experience at all.

Who Killed Bugsy Marlowe definitely lives up to the ‘hype’ and my only regret is that I didn’t play this sooner! I absolutely love 1920s noir, murder mysteries, and escape rooms, so Bugsy Marlowe is a double thumbs up from me. I hope that at-home games like this one will be around to stay for a lot longer.

Who Killed Bugsy Marlowe can be booked on Great Scott Escape’s website here.

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E-Scape Rooms: The Alp | Review

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The Alp Review | The Alp is here. He won’t leave and you can’t run away. He waits for the night to fall. When you lay your head to rest, he will be there.

Completion Time: 1 hour
Date Played: March 2021
Party Size: 2
Difficulty: Medium

I absolutely love the horror genre, and with that comes the excitement of horror escape rooms. The unsettling feeling of fear combined with time sensitive puzzle solving gives me such an adrenaline rush, so I was eager to play E-Scape Room Games’ The Alp.

An unsettling horror themed game with brilliant puzzles and an excellent eerie narrative

We played as a group of three over Zoom and were each invited to join the game on our separate devices. Our narrator is introduced through some mysterious black and white footage, and he begins to describe a house with a dark past. On moving into the house, his wife started to experience horrific nightmares until one morning, she didn’t wake up. Soon enough, the narrator starts to experience these nightmares for himself. It’s up to us to figure out what’s going on before it’s too late.

The game begins and we’re free to explore the first room. We’re all able to explore separate areas of the room at the same time by dragging and clicking, and if anything of significance happens we’re all redirected to a video simultaneously to ensure we don’t miss a thing. Many of the puzzles require teamwork and communication from different areas of the room, and the game makes it really easy to co-ordinate this.

The puzzles are a mix of cyphers, deduction, pattern spotting and some algebra thrown in to test our school day memories. They fit in with the theme perfectly, and are supplemented by an eerie soundtrack which allow the puzzles to flow nicely with the story. Game design means it’s always clear what the task in hand is, and progress is marked with several sinister videos deepening the feeling of immersion.

The hint system is simple, and you can select which area of the room you need help with along with step by step clues designed to not give too much away.

Overall, we thoroughly enjoyed this room. Although one addition to the ending of the story took us away from the immersion slightly**, we were suitably spooked and relieved with our decision to play in daylight.

Note: This review was originally published on March 7th 2021 on Borderline Puzzler. ** the ending has since changed.

E-Scape Rooms are currently offering The Alp for just £5.49 with the discount code ALPINTRO666, which is an absolute bargain for this game.

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E-Scape Rooms: The Sword of Drakul | Review

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E-scape Rooms: The Sword of Drakul | Review | Retrieve the sword of the dragon king and save the kingdom in this online escape room game. 

Completion Time: 46:24
Date Played: 18th October 2021
Party Size: 4
Difficulty: Medium

If we could give an award for the most exciting and dramatic intro to any at-home escape room game, The Sword of Drakul would claim it! Seriously, I felt like I was watching the intro to HBO’s latest fantasy drama rather than an escape room.

Game of Thrones, eat your heart out!

On an October Monday – not our typical escape room day of the week – Escaping the Closet, our friend Tasha and I sat down to try the brand new game from E-scape Rooms. Please note, we played the game a couple of days before it’s official launch, meaning it’s possible the game has been tweaked slightly (read as: improved), so take this review with a pinch of salt!

Kings and Dragons and… Goblins!

The story of the Sword of Drakul is an exciting one. We arrive on the scene at the end of an incredibly long war between dragons and humans. So deadly that many a city had been burned to a crisp under the dragon’s tyrannical rule. The king of this great land, after trying every ‘conventional’ method, soon turned to magic to try to stop them – bewitching his most trusted soldiers into dragons themselves to fight them off.

However those six soldiers soon turned against the king and killed him to stop their power from being reversed at the end of the war. However, this also meant that the only secret to stopping these power-crazed dragons died with him. Legend has it the only way to stop the is to recover a mythical sword from deep within the king’s armoury.

It just so happens our crack team of escape room enthusiasts are up to the job. This isn’t our first rodeo and we’ve broken into (and out of) many a king’s armoury before. It’s time to save the world!

Start in the Catacombs…

The Sword of Drakul is played on a platform called Telescape. This means that players have a 360 degree view of each new space and may click into anything for a closer look. Furthermore, you’ll be able to see each other’s mouse mark on the screen to see which puzzles they’re working on in real time. In The Sword of Drakul, when an object is clickable, a dragon’s eye appeared and blinked at us, so no red herrings here.

What was most impressive about this at-home escape room however was those 360 degree views. In most Telescape games, they’re recreations of real life spaces captured with a 360 camera, but E-scape have gone a step further and created a whole new world that felt like it was right out of a video game!

We started in the Catacombs before moving throughout the castle in search of the hidden chamber, solving puzzles along the way – but each time we encountered a new space it took our breath away. The sheer detail! How can this be real? Absolutely gorgeous.

The Dragon King’s Puzzles

Overall, the puzzles in The Sword of Drakul felt really well themed to the setting. When I think of fantasy castles, I think of dusty old games of chess, huge stone pillars with unusual inscriptions and mysterious mechanics lost of time, and of course plenty of dragon motifs! This about sums it up for this at-home escape game, and players can expect to encounter a lot of different puzzles suited to a small group of players.

In particular, my favourite puzzle involved a maze and a goblin. This was also one of the most collaborative puzzles in the game where Ash and I separated ourselves at other ends of the room communicating directions and instructions out to one another. Collaborative puzzles are a theme throughout the game, and on many occasions we had to work together with two, or even three of us split between different screens. As such, we’d recommend it for at least a team of three!

There was one puzzle which didn’t gel particularly well with us, but we were lucky to be playing an early access version of the game and could ask the creator directly what the correct solution and method to solve it was. Once explained, it made a lot more sense!

The Verdict

Overall, we really enjoyed playing the Sword of Drakul. It’s also one of the prettiest Telescape games we’ve seen in a long time – for that reason, we’re awarding it a Diamond Badge (left) reserved for the best looking games in their genre!

This would be a fantastic game for anyone who is a fan of the fantasy genre – or anyone who simply wants to be impressed! There’s something for everyone in this game and we were delighted with it from start to finish.

The Sword of Drakul can be booked on E-Scape’s website here.

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Wild Hare Escapes: Legend of the Labyrinth | Review

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The Legend of the Labyrinth Review | Some may have heard the legend of Theseus—the brave warrior who entered King Minos’ labyrinth, found his way to the vicious Minotaur, fought and killed the creature, and then emerged from the maze victorious… ​Baloney. The guy just has a killer press agent!

In reality, Theseus (a close personal friend of yours), has always been a total screw-up. One night recently he got hammered and volunteered to go into the labyrinth to kill the Minotaur. Classic Theseus.

Date Played: 20th September 2021
Number of Players: 4
Difficulty: Medium
Time Taken: 43 minutes

An escape room tournament based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur… AND there’s a prize for the fastest escapist? Don’t mind if I do!

Actually, in honesty I picked up Legend of the Labyrinth with two colleagues after being very intrigued about how they’d used their online gaming platform – Telescape. Rather than the traditional point-and-click, or 360 degree views of real life rooms, Wild Hare Escapes have quite literally built out the whole Minotaur’s labyrinth for you and your team to explore.

It’s got stylised graphics, clever puzzles, and buckets of humour. It’s their fourth game of this time, and an all round brilliant and unique play-at-home experience!

Theseus’s Story so Far

Legend of the Labyrinth is a modern retelling of the classic Greek myth. It takes the legend of Theseus – a brave warrior who journeyed to the centre of the labyrinth to kill the Minotaur. The problem is, this legend isn’t strictly true. Theseus is your friend and he’s just gone in there to drink with his girlfriend and got lost along the way. Its up to you to journey into the maze after him and rescue him.

If you come across the Minotaur while you’re in there, well you’ll just have to deal with it as best you can! But the Minotaur isn’t the only thing to worry about. In our game we also encountered nymphs and cyclopses and all manner of familiar faces from the legends.

To navigate (and escape) the maze, you’re armed with only your wits… And of course anything you manage to find along the way too!

How to Escape the Labyrinth

The puzzles in Legend of the Labyrinth are varied and unique! For starters, you need to first navigate the maze itself! I counted at least three separate areas of maze, each hidden door unlocking a whole new area to explore (and get lost into). Telescape is very handy in that it allows you to see the mouse pointers of your team mates. However, in Legend of the Labyrinth you’re encouraged (and will need to at some points) split up and look at different areas. Being spatially aware and about help your team mates navigate to your position after finding something exciting is the first part of the puzzle!

In the live environment, the whole game could probably be solved by one player – but there are clear moments when two or three players at different points in the map are more helpful than not. After all, team work makes the dream work.

There are also fun moments where different players need to be in different locations at once, working simultaneously to solve riddles, or logic puzzles, and so on. It also helps to keep an open mind and click everything – you’ll never know when it’ll be interactable! And if nothing else, clicking everything reveals the humour!

I mean, I definitely clicked on a statue’s butt because the caption made me laugh about 30 times

*cough cough*

Where there’s a labyrinth, there’s a Minotaur!

As a whole, journeying through Wild Hare Escapes’ labyrinth was a joy! It’s a very funny game and packed with fun puzzles and moments. Our team of three would often spend a long time looking for a certain item, expecting one outcome – only to have the game turn it on it’s head with a very humourous twist.

At launch, Wild Hare Escapes announced a competition to win an exciting $300 USD to the fastest team to escape. In September this team was announced as Burning Prospects. Kiss Babies came in second place and took home $100. It’s a really cool touch, I just lament playing a few days too late to take part in the competition!

The icing on the cake of an already great game however had to be the illustrations! There’s this distinctive style that’s a cross between hand illustrated drawings, photographs, and video game 3D renders. Added together lends an iconic style to the Legend of the Labyrinth game.

The Verdict

Overall, great fun! It’s a light-hearted retelling of a classic Greek legend, through the medium of an hour long point-and-click adventure. For the best experience, play with at least a team of 3.

The Legend of the Labyrinth can be booked on Wild Hare Escapes’ website here.