Join a team of bandits as they attempt to pull off one of the most audacious heists you’ve ever seen! But will you make your getaway in time?
Rating: Fun
Completion Time: 1.5 hours
Date Played: 29th of May 2020
Party Size: 1
The Heist is a new play at home game from family run escape room The Locked Room. It’s full of charm, has some fantastic puzzles (and fantastically tricky ones too) and clearly has a lot of love poured into it. The best part? With every purchase £2.50 (or £5 if you complete the game) is donated to a local charity (The Eastbourne Food Bank). What a lovely touch!
In terms of gameplay, The Heist is played via a Google form, which is an interesting medium, but makes sense as it’s a tool a lot of creators have at their fingertips. What this means for gameplay is that at the end of each page of the form, you’ll be required to input the correct answer as you navigate through the plot. Case sensitivity matters, but there’s clues on each page and a soundtrack you can click on to boot.
For a heist theme, you can expect a mix of traditional puzzles (think mazes, ciphers and logic puzzles) combined with having to step out into the real world such Google Street view and scouring real life websites for small details to help you crack the case. A detail I love during quarantine – it almost makes you forget that everything is shut and we can’t leave our apartments!
As such, it’s nicely immersive! I reckon if I were to pull off an audacious heist such as this myself, I’d so more or less the same things the game encourages you to do, but in real life – which is another cool touch. They’ve thought about it a lot! First, scout the location, pick up your gear, travel there, time your escape, and drop your van off… Yeah I’ve watched a lot of heist documentaries! Haha.
I will add that whilst the puzzles aren’t the best examples of each of their types I’ve ever seen, there is enough in the game to keep you involved and excited for well over an hour. Similarly, the graphics aren’t incredible – but then not everyone is a photoshop wizard and this should never stop an escape room company from releasing their game!
A final note, I played this game solo and it worked well. I think this game would be best for smaller groups (or indeed solo if you want a mini adventure of your own for an afternoon!).
The Heist can be purchased for £10 on The Locked Room‘s website.
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