The Last Pyramid: The Sands of Time Review | Your guide will send you and your team deep into the heart of an ancient pyramid floating in space in order to solve a plethora of puzzles, stop the clocks and bank time that you will use to break out of the pyramid’s vaults and search for the treasures within. Once your adventure is complete, your host will trade your treasures for Earth-based physical and digital prizes which will be delivered to you in the real world!

Date Played: 6th October 2021
Time Taken: 1 Hour
Number of Players: 3
Difficulty: Medium

Prepare to go on a journey like no other

We certainly weren’t!

But this adventure is certainly one which you are unlikely to forget in a hurry.

So we saw the words “pyramid” and “sands of time” and ultimately thought that it must be some kind of online Ancient Egyptian style escape room… Ahh, but how wrong we were! Sure, there is a pyramid and yes, the sands of time are ticking. Instead what we played was about as futuristic as online escape room experiences get!

Floating through space, many years in the future, we found ourselves inside The Pyramid. Here we encountered a series of strange catacombs and eerie laboratories, packed with innovative (and often highly pressurised) games! The aim of the adventure is to bank time by completing these games in as quick as time as possible, which will ultimately lead you to the vault where the banked time is used to answer a series of quick fire puzzles. As you do so, you actually get real life gifts as a reward!

So not only do you have a great hours worth of entertainment, you get something as a keepsake to remember your journey! We loved this as it’s a really clever way of having something tangible to remember your experience. So far in lockdown, such a nice touch has been greatly lacking for online escape room games!

How does The Sands of Time work?

Jumping aboard a Zoom call, the three of us (Mairi, Rebecca and myself) were met by a clever holding screen giving us a countdown to our adventure. At the end of the countdown, our enigmatic host, Ee, joined the call. Ee was a slightly haphazard agent from the far-far future, who kept us on track throughout the experience as we explored this labyrinth of mini-games. Despite our obvious frustration at some of the puzzles, our GM kept us thoroughly engaged!

A Live Avatar… Or a Video Game

One of the most unique things about The Last Pyramid: Sands of Time is how much the game looked and felt like a video game. From the cracking audio and visual elements, to our host guiding us around the maze of rooms to take part in mini games such as a modern version of whack a mole, or remembering sequences, or solving rapid maths puzzles.

Regular readers will note that I have a real soft spot for audios and visuals to help increase immersion, and this game has this in abundance! Luckily there are no videos of our collective dancing in some of the cut-scenes of this game!

The puzzles of the game were very intriguing; don’t expect tradition cypher or combination code style puzzles here. You are met with fast-paced punchy games, which could be easily accessible to gamers both new and experienced!

The designers have cleverly acknowledged the the purpose of this game is to gain time to get into the vault, so everything is generally quite snappy. At the end of each mini game – no more than a minute or two long, you bank a number of seconds added onto your end score. It adds a lot of excitement and pressure, but it also means that if you fail hard at some of the mini games, you’ve plenty of time to redeem yourself later.

The main thing? It’s so much fun! The hour absolutely flew by, aided by the 25-ish puzzles we packed in. But they weren’t all puzzles and the game required a lot more from us than just sitting on our backsides for an hour. Have a phone, pen, Google, and be ready to jump up from your seat at a moments notice to look for items in your area or hide from a Squid-game-esque enemy.

The Verdict

When all was said and done, with our brains every so slightly frazzled, its safe to say that we had an absolute blast and left with smiles on our faces. The combination of a great host, some very innovative games, some cool use of audio and visual elements, all add up to experience which we will not be forgetting in a hurry! 

The Last Pyramid: The Sands of Time can be booked at www.ultimatequest.co.uk

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