cyphomandra | Entries tagged with escape room

A month ago I went on my first overseas trip since September 2019. I was simultaneously thrilled to be travelling and petrified about catching COVID, as (until tomorrow) in order to get back into NZ I need to have a negative COVID tests <24 hours before my flight. This was not an entirely theoretical concern as two of my three friends who’d just been to Australia got COVID and had to stay for an extra week. Therefore I flew over the day before the meeting and did all my usual Sydney things (Kinokuniya, Haighs, the train to Circular Quay, an escape room etc) in an N95 mask, likewise the meeting, and managed to make it back unvirused.

There are some amazing escape rooms in Sydney that I really want to try but I did not have any people in the necessary Venn diagram of a) reliably will wear mask and inform me of COVID risk b) some familiarity with escape rooms c) available at very short notice. I therefore did one that, while not the most exciting or original, could be done solo and did have a concept that I found appealing for being basically one of my major anxiety dreams :D

You are on holiday in Paris, staying in the most beautiful hotel. Your holiday is finally approaching the end and you are preparing to leave. You must depart for the airport in one hour, however you cannot locate your passport or your plane tickets! Can you find them and escape to the airport in time?

(I sent the room description to my sister and she texted back with, “YOUR PASSPORT IS IN THE PHOTOCOPIER”, which was sadly not true on this occasion but indicates the universality of the theme, at least in my family)

( Vague description. )

My anxiety dreams about having to pack everything and move did die down a bit after my experience in the aftermath of the Chch earthquake of having one hour to access my red-zoned house and get out as many things as I could, so I’ll have to see if this has a similar effect on the travel ones. I do not however think I want to do an escape room where it’s the end of the academic year and I’ve suddenly discovered I have an exam to sit for a course I haven’t been attending…

Death has plagued the small city of Sunnyvale. Detectives were able to uncover a piece of evidence that has led to the true identity of the assassin. You never would have guessed it! The killer is no other than Nissassa, the most well-known modern artist to date!

We’ll need you to help take down Nissassa once and for all. It’s short notice but we have one agent already out there so you will be their intel. Unfortunately they weren’t our first choice but we have to work with what we have. You have ninety minutes…

This was voted top online escape room in 2020 by TERPECA (the Top Escape Rooms Project Enthusiasts’ Choice Award) and (unsurprisingly!) it is now my new favourite online escape room, edging out Miss Edith and with Project Avatar in third. Fantastic concept, great puzzles, humour, tension, and above all two incredible actors - Agent Wolf, the earnestly naive agent who we were guiding through the mission, and Nissassa himself. Wolf was wearing a body cam and we didn’t actually see her until the end of the mission, but she was endearingly clueless and subtly helpful in equal measure; Nissassa was all too threateningly present throughout. We were on Zoom (six of us in total scattered across the country) and had a telescape window acting as a communal inventory, into which anything we discovered got put for closer examination. All the tech worked really well.

It is an escape room set - you start outside a building, staring at the door - but solving the puzzles in some cases takes you outside the game, to the internet and elsewhere, which really helped build the game world. There’s less improv than Edith, but still some, and the puzzles are satisfyingly art-themed.

And then there’s the twist. You find this out in the first few minutes, and it is in some of the reviews (as well as being alluded to in the game material above before I edited it back out) so it’s not necessarily unexpected, but I am going to put it under a spoiler cut.

( Spoiler. )

It’s a fantastic game. It’s dark and funny, and the final confrontation was agonisingly tense, especially as I’d lost track of time but knew we were getting close (we finished in 84 minutes). Apparently there’s a solve rate of 41%, so we all felt pleasantly chuffed and chatted happily with the actors for the debrief. It is probably the most expensive escape room I’ve done - flat fee of $US179 for the room, up to 8 players allowed - but I think it’s more than justified.

Grab your oil lamps and your most trusted companions for treachery is afoot!

It is with a heavy heart I must say this is not a story for the faint of heart. We will be uncovering the tale of three orphans and their heart-racing escape from one Cottonsworth Mill. A mill filled with awful mechanical contraptions, mysterious spirits and some Wrongly Educated Adults and their Dubious treatment of Very Smart Children.

This Ukiyo At Home calls upon grown-ups and children alike to collaborate and solve puzzles to help the Cottonsworth Children out of a Very Very Bad Place. If you like Spirited Away, My Neighbour Totoro and A Series of Unfortunate Events… grab your oil lamp, button in your braces, pocket some bread – things are about to get very interesting at the Cottonsworth Mills!

Ukiyo is a Melbourne escape room company who have a room called The Crumbling Prince based on Zelda games and anime, where players each wear a mask with a unique special power, which is top of my list to visit when travel is a thing again. During lockdowns they have run three on-line events, all designed for groups and very cheap ($AU5 per person); this is the second I’ve played and the first I’ve finished. The other one, Stawk Pine Falls was Twin Peaks-inspired and has you as an investigator sent to an odd small town to investigate a missing person, with YouTube channels and radio shows and new content every day. I was doing this with a friend and we managed the first 4 days or so (of ten) before getting overwhelmed with work and not having enough time to catch up; however, hopefully they’re redoing it at the end of the year. Very much internet-based as a puzzler; there was a particularly nice one using different versions of the same document in gdocs. I didn’t do Bird Cage, which they compared to Stranger Things , which I also haven’t seen, but this one looked cool and also shorter – three parts, the longest of which was about two hours.

There are short video-clips but this is basically an IF game. There are some illustrations (which may contain clues) but all the interaction is via text, clicking, or inputting speech. It is also a game that relies on the players working as a team. You play as one of three characters – Sam, Shu Fang, or Clare – and all three characters need to be there and active to solve the puzzles, as the information you need (a code word, a location, the right lever to pull) may only be apparent to one of the other characters. There are other limitations as well – Sam is illiterate and Shu Fang is colour-blind, so a puzzle involving reading or colour recognition has to be handed over to another player for help. We did this on phone chat, talking through our puzzles and offering up suggestions (or just wailing when we got stuck). It is possible to play solo but they suggest using a different browser for each character to reduce confusion (and I expect there would be a lot!). We played on three separate nights.

The team aspect worked really well. The game has no way of knowing if other characters are playing – it’s not live and you don’t register – but it feels as though they’re there. When you get to a point where all three characters have to act, it asks you to check if everyone’s ready before clicking – and you do, even though it doesn’t make any difference. At one point my character drops some tools down a shaft to another character – and it felt as though I had, even though their character would only get them once they were at the right stage in the game, regardless of what I’d done.

The puzzles are also themed to each character (trading, mechanical, and cooking) and they were all fair, and nicely done; when I got stuck it was usually because I hadn’t checked whether something I’d done had opened up a new dialogue option. The voice-over was a bit too Stephen Fry-lite and twee, but it works for the story and there are some really neat moments. I definitely intend to do more of their rooms, hopefully eventually in person.

Forget everything you expect from this game. This is an unusual hybrid of an escape room, video game and movie. Remember to be fast like bunny and watch the time! You have 60 minutes to escape this reality!

#peak2020 is, obviously, being at home and on Zoom at midnight NZ time with another NZer, two Australians, and an American, none of whom I have ever met before, all of us yelling instructions to a guy in the Ukraine (only visible as a pair of gloved hands) who is searching for magical items in a massive booby-trapped warehouse on livestream.

This was fun and frantic and super quirky. There is an overall plot (that doesn’t make a lot of sense), a villain and a helper, items everywhere, puzzles that have to be solved to get high value items, loot boxes that may contain either items or a trap that will take not only one of your three lives but five minutes of your time, an optional egg game that can restore time and lives, and objects that when you examine them trigger cut-scenes that don’t do much other than suck up more time. There is also a crafting bench, which you have to use to create keys as well as high value artifacts; again, it triggers a crafting montage, so after doing the first key we saved the next batch up to do all at once. Your Avatar is cheerfully helpful without overdoing it, and manages to convey a fair bit of personality with just hand gestures.

( No actual spoilers but more detail. )

You may recognise Edith Humphreys, your sweet neighbour with 24 cats. You may have even helped her out, snooped around her apartment. But there's something about Edith that doesn't quite add up... she looks way younger than she is, she says she was born in 1902 but that she's 97 years young... and she lives at a business called Mad Genius Escapes?! What is going on here...

The first on-line escape room I've played that really required you to be on-line (Twitter, Google, various websites), as well the second with a live actor. It's for four players exactly - each of you gets a unique code-name at the start, and that gives you access to the puzzles. However, each person may see different material, or have different controls, and you may only be able to solve them by working together. This often involved a lot of shouting over zoom (the three people I played with were in a different city and all at different computers, although two were in the same house) when we needed to line something up exactly or complete a sequence of steps in a precise order only one of us could see.

( Set-up spoiler for final puzzle, not solution. ) Fast, frenetic, and entertaining. One of our group with less experience with escape rooms did have some difficulties but there were enough individual puzzles that they were able to catch up without delaying things too much. Finished it with, I think, two minutes to go. Would definitely recommend, wherever you are.

You and your crew of scallywags thought it’d be smooth sailing under captain Blackbeard. But after seeing all the gold on offer you started a battle of mutiny to take it and free yourself from his horrific orders. Alas, you sea dwellers were no match for this scurvy dog and he captured and locked you in the ship's hold. You are charged with mutiny! Prepare to endure the thrashing waves on your journey to the pirate island of Tortuga, where you will be sold to the highest bidder. Pull up your bootstraps and draw your swords, the ship will make land in 60 minutes. There is a perilous ending awaiting you if you don’t escape the ship before it's too late!

Starts with a bang as your team is split up and locked in two Age of Sail style cells while audio plays of the captain walking away chortling with malice. Both teams need to work together to get out. We managed to unlock my sister’s cell (we were doing it as a two-person team, as our third player couldn’t make it at the last minute) but mine was more elusive, so I spent some time peering through the bars while my sister wandered round describing things I couldn’t see.

It’s a biggish room, with multiple parts and a good assortment of puzzle mechanics, including some I hadn’t seen before (the candles, the door, sound cues), and all tied in well with the theme. Xcape will give you any number of clues but they come with time penalties; we did not ask for any and got out with five minutes to spare, but the GM did put a couple of hints up on the countdown display, e.g. when we’d managed to make something drop but couldn’t work out where it was. Only one combination lock and a few keys; the combo lock was already open but everything else worked fine.I liked it a lot, although a childhood of reading my way steadily through Hornblower and Ramage (and Antonia Forest) means that I am disinclined to sympathise with pirates.

We’ve done Asylum, which was also a very strong room. Their other two rooms are rated easier, but I’d still like to try them, and I’m very excited about their new rooms.

Dearest Investigators,

Thank you for answering my advertisement. I am in search of an investigative team with ample experience, strong deductive skills, an eagerness to work and learn, or all of the above. I don’t have a lot of time to pick and choose. I think that your team will work for what I need.

I am researching the closure of the catacombs and the strange occurrences that people around town have mentioned ever since. It hasn’t been easy to gain access. So, we will need to be quick and focused.

In order to keep things as safe and quiet as possible, I will be going on location to the catacombs under the Posthoorn Church in Amsterdam alone…

This would have been absolutely petrifying to do in real life; it was still disturbing to do via Google Meet and YouTube, across three different cities and two time zones.

( Gives some details but non spoilery. )
The guide joined us outside on a fine summer morning in Amsterdam (evening NZ time) and live-streamed his walk to the church, and it was oddly jolting to be that close to travelling to another country and yet so far away at the same time. I’m unlikely to leave the country this year, and who knows when I’ll get to Europe again? I know we’re very fortunate here in New Zealand but this confinement to one place is unsettling in a way I still can’t get used to.

The Future Directions Bureau sent their top agent (code name Fox) on a crucial mission in the 21st century to preserve the timeline. However, Agent Fox has now disappeared from the time stream. Enemy action is suspected - it’s up to you to trace his whereabouts and save the future.

Having booked a live Zoom escape room set in a catacombs in Amsterdam, along with my sister and brother-in-law who are also nowhere near the Netherlands, I got an email an hour or so before our timeslot apologising and saying that due to technical difficulties they would have to postpone, although if we wanted we could still pop over and do it in person. In a fit of frustrated puzzle-based enthusiasm (and lacking a functional teleporter) I then searched the internet for other options and found Next Level Escape’s Temporal Tangle, an on-line escape room with the advantage of not needing a timeslot, and we played that instead.

Next Level Escape is a Sydney company whose rooms I’ve eyed up for some time, partly because of good reviews but mostly because they have a room called Ex Libris where the gimmick is that you’re pulled into a portal between the real world and various books and, well, yes please. I have not yet managed to coordinate any Sydney trips with a free evening and enough people to do the room with, so it was good to get a sneak preview of their style.

For $AU35 you get an ID that allows up to four people to enter the game, which you can play at any time. It is basically playing a video game separately but simultaneously; you might all be in the same room, but you can’t see anyone else or interact with them. The three of us had a conference phone call running on speakerphone (not organised by the game) so we could talk through it. The game itself is an interesting hybrid of reality and video game, in that the rooms are 360 degree renderings of an actual escape room. Objects can be clicked on and, if picked up, examined in a 3D visualiser; there is an odd glitch where if you pick up an object it appears in your inventory but still stays in the environment, which is a bit disconcerting and made one puzzle harder in that you couldn’t tell which of those objects you’d collected.

It is code-heavy but they do work hard at making that on theme; the unlockable containers are memories, and once you have them all there are two more puzzles based on your collection as a whole. Some puzzles translated surprisingly well to the game format (the UV light), while others less so - I found the photos in the dark room very hard to see on my laptop. Reasonable storyline - again, enhanced by having the characters’ voiceovers reading the notes they’d left - and there’s even a choice at the end, once you’ve solved the puzzles, which leads to one of two endings. We took longer as everyone had to solve all the puzzles, but got through with no hints in about eighty minutes.

(the Catacombs are now scheduled for the 28th of June).

Murder in the Prince of Wales Hotel (Escape Quest, Queenstown). In the 1860’s The Prince of Wales Hotel stood where Escape Quest is today. Garrett’s gang has been accused of several robberies and murders and are hiding out in the Hotel. Queenstown needs your help to prove the gang is guilty! While the gang is out of town, time travel back and enter the Prince of Wales Hotel. Discover the gang’s hideout, defuse the booby trap and find the evidence for the crimes. Be quick, the gang will be back in 1 hour….!

( This is the first escape room I didn’t make it out of in time. )

The Bach, Escapade. You’re in the classic Kiwiana bach (beach house) - faded couches, old lamps, that vintage sailboat picture on the wall... but something’s up. You’ve got a cryptic message from Gran giving you the clue to an old mystery only the most observant, street smart investigators will solve. This tricky mystery will test you to the limits of your imagination and creativity - are you up for the challenge?

( I did this from home with my kids with my sister & her kids in another city, via Zoom and an Escapade staff member with a Go Pro. )

Quite a few places are now doing on-line escape rooms with the lockdown. My sister did a Canadian one last weekend, and we're now trying to coordinate schedules for a horror-themed one in Amsterdam, if anyone's interested...

$cyphomandra: fractured brooding landscape (Default)$

The Chronotech A.I. Sophie has mysteriously gone off-line, taking a whole support crew with her. You are the next repair crew, tasked with fixing Sophie. You have sixty minutes to do so before her meltdown endangers the entire world - and, because her control chamber is now flooded with deadly photonic radiation, you must do everything in total darkness…

This is my new favourite escape room: a high concept, carried through in all the puzzles, plus a fabulous twist and a solid ending. Rotofobia’s Hell’s Kitchen and Xcape’s The Asylum were scarier, and Hell’s Kitchen still has the edge as the most atmospheric, but the lack of resolution to the frame story did undercut some of the joy of solving it; Into the Dark really sells its conclusion.

To start we were all assigned a role in the Chronotech crew, given an ID card, shown a well-acted but not terribly helpful briefing, and then blindfolded with blacked-out ski masks before being sent in. You have no idea of the dimensions or contents of the room. There’s no radio or walkie talkie, or a hint system (or at least not like that I’ve seen in some other rooms; Sophie did give us one hint), and there’s no countdown (nor can you see your watch!), all of which increase the tension. It also got extremely hot during our time there, which I gather wasn’t entirely intentional.

( Spoiler for one event, no details; but avoid if you want to play this. )
We got out in 48 minutes. It’s a new room, and only about 20 teams have done it so far; we were in the top ten of finishers. They’re still fine-tuning it, though - while we were waiting to go in a guy came out with a drill ((“just clearing away the previous team”) and we were the first team to test the new final puzzle. The staff were very keen to hear about our experience, and took us back in to go over one of the puzzles that we had in fact totally fluked. Great staff, great room, and an excellent story.

After a suspicious fire engulfed the Oakridge Lunatic Asylum five patients - all under the care of Dr Rutger - were never found. Later, the doctor’s wife made a death-bed confession about her husband’s concealed room, where he performed unspeakable experiments; you & your team must re-enter the remains of the asylum and investigate.

This is my second favourite room so far after Rotophobia’s One Hell of a Kitchen, and while that still has the edge for atmosphere this one was pretty unnerving. The website had a warning for jump scares, and knowing that kept us on edge for the whole game - at one point one of the group went back into a previous room to check something, and there was then a bloodcurdling scream - which turned out to be a recording triggered by her opening a drawer. We got out in just under the hour and asked for two clues, which were given with time penalties - one was a puzzle where we’d tried so many options that we’d confused ourselves, and the other was a failure to note all the effects from a switch I’d triggered (the lights flashed on and off to the sound of gunshots, and we’d all huddled together in the conviction that something was about to launch itself in our direction). Apart from the puzzle we confused ourselves on they were all fair and fun - one involved finding blocks to put into a marble run mounted on the wall behind plastic, so that the marble would land in the right place to trigger a door opening - and the final puzzle involved finding five skulls and placing them in the right order on five markers.

The escape room format does definitely lend itself to horror. There are a few around with different formats (escape the sinking ship, complete the WWII spy mission) that I’d like to try as well, but I do like horror and it’s interesting seeing what format it works for me in - I am not particularly fond of horror movies, but I do like horror fiction and computer games. The guy at this one when we were discussing escape rooms also recommended Rotofobia’s R18 room, which I’d thought sounded a bit gimmicky (you’re trying to escape a strip club before the bouncer comes back) but he said it was the best one he’s done so I may well give it a go next time I’m there.

$cyphomandra: fractured brooding landscape (Default)$

As per request! I have now done six, so obviously I like them, and I am eyeing up a few more new ones at the moment.

So. An escape room is basically that: you’re shut into a room, and you have to work out how to get out within a set time. All the escape rooms I’ve done also have some sort of story arc to them, whether that’s finding something or escaping from someone, and the puzzles tend to be themed around that. Puzzles include finding/solving codes & riddles, opening locks (combination or key), collecting objects, putting things in sequence, triggering doors etc; most of the rooms have had more than one room. Some use digital media or audio messages, or other tricks like UV light or magnets. They are designed for groups, usually around four people - Escape Mate had a minimum of two, the lowest, and we had seven people at Break and Escape. All have some option for clues (usually limited to 3) and communication with the supervising staff. I haven’t (yet!) done any with actors.

( Escapade, The Tavern. Locked in a mystical tavern from times long past, you’re on a quest to save the city. )

( Escape Mate, The Lab (stop a deadly bio-weapon being developed and save the world!) and The Temple (the Death Gods are awakening and plan to bring about the end of days unless they can be stopped! )

( Rotofobia, One Hell of A Kitchen. Fancy restaurant…kitchen… dinner… great food …what could possibly go wrong?! When you regain your consciousness last thing you remember was taking a bite of a sausage from your main course… then all black…you look around and it doesn’t look promising…and it`s freezing…you have 60 minutes to change your fate! )

( Break and Escape, Evil Hospital. Ailey’s father was a doctor in a psychiatric hospital. One day the hospital was shut down by the government and her father has been missing ever since. Her father’s disappearance has always weighed on Ailey’s mind. She knew that she had to unmask the truth! )

( Escape Masters – Zombie Apocalypse. The world has been invaded by zombies and you and your team are amongst the few survivors, but not for long. You’ve heard rumors of a mad scientist that may have found an antidote to protect humans against the zombies. Desperate to save your lives, you decide to break into his house in the hopes of finding the antidote. )

So. What do I like? An immersive setting and a story arc, as well as interesting and challenging puzzles; not all codes/keys, but I don’t mind if some of them are, and I do like some puzzles to be physical, as well as having hidden spaces/other rooms revealed. Hints are handy but I want them limited and, actually, what I’d really like in some cases would be an idea of how far I was through the puzzle so I can decide if I need a hint or if I have enough time to keep going. I like the puzzles to have some thematic element, and I do like puzzles where you go back to them later, or where the answer isn’t necessarily in the same space. And I do quite like horror in this setting, although it's not compulsory.