Virtual Escaping: Underground Murder | Review
On his way to work, a young man is killed on the subway. How he was murdered is still unknown. Suspects and witnesses have been questioned, but now it’s up to you to find out exactly what happened.
Rating: Spooky!
Completion Time: 34 minutes
Date Played: 28th March 2021
Party Size: 4
Recommended For: 16+ Murder Mystery Enthusiasts and Budding Detectives
Week two in my Escape Game Olympics journey and this time we are…Down a couple of places, aww. But hey! There were 13 additional teams playing this week and I’m still super proud of our fantastic score of 34 minutes and 8 seconds! As with before, I’m playing on the Escaping the Closet team with Alice, Ash and Tash and absolutely loving the competition.
Underground Murder
If there’s two things I love it’s murder mysteries and underground trains. Ok I’m kidding on the last part. Does anyone actually love cramming onto a sticky underground train for a daily commute? Bleh. It’s a perk of working from home that I never need to again. BUT THIS underground train station is deserted. Why? There’s been a horrific murder and you, a team of detectives, must solve the case quickly and get the trains running again.
Underground Murder has really spooky vibes. The whole environment was dark and mysterious – think flickering lights and plenty of dark places with discarded weapons *shudders*. To navigate the game, it’s a straight forward point and click, but the environment really makes you work for it… Read as, a lot of button mashing from me in all the shadowy places trying to find stuff.
Whilst is IS a point and click, unlike others, you can’t see what your fellow players are doing unless they discover something new – this pops up on screen for all players. So communication is absolutely the key:
“I am in the engine room, I have found this, we need a 4 digit code…” etc. etc.
The Puzzles
The game is really cleverly done in terms of solving the ‘big puzzle’ of whodunnit. Sure, it feels like an escape room with puzzles to solve, but the end goal is to collect as much evidence as possible and interrogate the suspect statements to figure out who the murder is and more importantly why the victim died.
As you search for evidence, the main purpose of the puzzles are to unlock the three new areas. For example, an engineer’s room locked with a 4 digit code, or a series of panels that control the train doors. Rather unhelpful of the station staff not to give me this kind of information, but hey ho! As such, most of the puzzles require you to find a 3, 4, or 5 digit/letter code – so we spent a great deal of time trying the same code in various locks until we cracked it.
A few stand out puzzles didn’t involve 4 digit codes (well, not exactly). At one point you’ll find yourself needing to unlock a phone with a shape, and other puzzles may involve small details in statements you overlooked the first time you read them. Pretty cool!
With three distinct areas to explore you won’t have enough information to solve the case until you unlock everything BUT you can try. At any point in the game you can head to your detective notebook, review the evidence, and solve the case. Pretty cool!
We ‘solved the case’ so the moment we were sure we were right (hey! This IS a competition – no time to waste!) BUT… This left us with one puzzle we did not solve and I’ve still no idea what it was supposed to do! Grrr, my inner completionist NEEDS TO KNOW what the puzzle solution was. Haha!
Overall
One of the standouts for me about Underground Murder is the really intriguing (and kinda beautiful) world. I just loved ‘being’ there and exploring the places. It was almost like a video game environment – damn, that’s a great idea! I would 100% play this if it were a video game, and right now I’m cheering the creators on to create a Part 2!
But, in the mean time, Underground Murder is a great option for a team of budding detectives looking to spend a fun afternoon solving a case. Even though we raced through it, there’s at least an hour – if not more’s worth of fun. You can see for yourself the various completion times of the players from this week’s EGO here.
Underground Murder can be purchased for £30 per team on Virtual Escaping’s website here.
