#61: Mission Breakout (London) – Underground 2099

With puzzles that required you to intuit too much, and some bad decisions regarding the sequencing in the game, Underground 2099’s weak theme left us feeling let down.

Rating:	★★☆☆☆ (Not recommended)
Location:	London
Team:	Rhubarb Rhubarb Rhubarb
Date:	3 July 2022
Hints taken:	Not recorded (many)
Time:	Not recorded (failed; somewhere in the region of 90m)
URL:	Mission Breakout

Front & Briefing

For a disused tube station, it’s surprisingly easy to miss, but the Mission Breakout logo above the heavy black doors made the frontage easy enough to spot on the high street. After buzzing in and being let through the front door, we then immediately found another set of doors which we had to refer to our confirmation email to get through. I’m not sure why the GM couldn’t have let us through these ones too!

Beyond the key-coded door was a set of stairs in dim lighting that leads directly into the main reception area of Mission Escape. This is atmospherically decorated with broadly war-time props, and sets the scene well. There’s a couple of toilets, lockers for belongings, and after that’s taken care of the team is led into a briefing room with seating to sign the usual waivers—and to give us our Ghostbuster-style backpacks for the game.

Our GM was enthusiastic throughout (including her in-game personas) and this was a highlight of the experience.

Theme

Mission Breakout makes a lot of being set up in an abandoned London Underground station, and its other room, The Lost Passenger, uses the location really well. I’m disappointed to say that Underground 2099 does not. While the game uses actual rooms within the abandoned station that show some of the bare structure of the tunnels, which is a novelty, the theming of the props and puzzles were very generic. The futuristic element of the game was leaned into as you begin the room—ostensibly, you are special agents being sent to the future to find another agent who has become lost there—but then also entirely forgotten about, especially by the time you exit the game. The story never really seemed to be fully resolved.

Puzzles

This room could have been done by two people, and our team of five was far too many for it. (The booking allows teams of up to six.) The majority of our team were milling around with nothing to do, especially in a rather long middle section of the game that came down to communication between exactly two players. These happened to be the best puzzles of the game too, leaving most of the team feeling left out. The structure of this section meant that nobody in the team actually saw the whole venue, which is a big shame because the creators had otherwise used the location quite well.

A lot of puzzles that could have done with in-game feedback part-way through to assure us that we were on the right track didn’t give any indication of it, and a few times we had just given up before being told to continue just a little longer, or interact with something that had not been signposted in the slightest.

There were a couple of search puzzles that required you to do things you wouldn’t usually expect to do in an escape room, which is either a good thing or a bad thing depending on your point of view. Again, there was no kind of signposting and so the hints from our GM basically had to tell us what to do directly (though I think they could have been scripted better).

The room also relied on artificially increasing the difficulty of puzzles by using very low lighting levels and muffling audio, which is something that always irks me. That really needs to be changed, in my opinion. People who are colour blind or who struggle to see colour in dark lighting would find some puzzles impossible.

Hint and time system

One team member was given a walkie-talkie at the start. This mostly worked okay, though we had some technical difficulties at the start with the initial prop/puzzle and the GM was quite slow to respond to this, to the point that we thought the walkie-talkie was broken as well as the puzzle! (After resetting, the puzzle worked, but we lost confidence in whether it was working thereafter, and given the lack of signposting as I mentioned above, it was impossible to tell.)

The music in the final minutes was too loud to hear the walkie-talkie over.

I wasn’t counting hints. Our team usually asks for fewer hints from the GM at the beginning, and we did here, but in the end we needed loads.

We had no countdown in the room. The futuristic backpacks we were given at the start supposedly had an “energy meter” on them that, it was implied, would serve as a countdown, but the ambiguity actually made some of the puzzles harder too… were we supposed to be re-powering them? At any rate, the light on mine turned from green to red shortly after I reached the middle section and… surely that wasn’t an hour already?

We found afterwards the GM had allowed us overtime, which was welcome, but honestly by 90 minutes into the game we were kind of fed up with it. I would have no idea where we lost time compared to the ideal playthrough. If you knew the room you could probably speed through it, but with time for discovery, repeating mistakes, and so on, I didn’t think we were being that slow.

Finale

There was no finale as I would describe it; just a couple of puzzles that were a little bulkier than usual. Given how the game started, I expected a similarly dramatic ending, but instead the game ended with an air of anticlimax.

Debriefing

We had overrun a lot and met the next team who were up next arriving as we departed, so I suspect the debrief we got probably wasn’t representative of a faster team. We got a team photo wearing some futuristic safety glasses that had appeared along with the camera, and a chance to wash our hands with soap and running water afterwards, which was definitely needed given the dustiness of the game!

#59: AI Escape (London) – Project Delta

A beautifully crafted room with a strong theme and engaging puzzles, let down a little by the linearity of the game.

Rating:	★★★ (Recommended)
Location:	London
Team:	AMPDG
Date:	20 October 2021
Hints taken:	1
Time:	1h27m13s (of 1h40m)
URL:	AI Escape

Front & Briefing

Archimedes Inspiration’s location is a good traditional one – tucked away alongside a building site in a converted biscuit factory, now mostly office space. The booking confirmation had excellent instructions and maps on how to find them; the only stumbling block we came across was that the area has gated access from the North side, but our host was able to come out and let us in!

The waiting area was large and a large TV screen presentation showed us the basic gameplay and safety blerb while the GM was doing the final resets before we started. It also showed a big photo of the team with the fastest time so far, if that’s something you aspire to! The website promised us a strong narrative, and this started early, with the GM taking a group photo of us, with an astronaut helmet, about to board our ship, then leading us into the room with our eyes closed and a secret to solve. Always exciting!

Theme

We were promised a spaceship and we got a spaceship! This felt like a high budget build, with electronics everywhere and very few obvious build artefacts. The theme was carried everywhere, with nothing feeling out of place. There were some nice surprises and a lot of the tools we were given were just plain fun to operate.

The room was big on narrative, which both needed to be broadly understood to figure out some of the puzzles, and had some extra bits and pieces thrown in for flavour too. The latter half of the game in particular had some nice extra touches which I enjoyed.

Puzzles

As advertised, Project Delta goes further than the average escape room in terms of the amount of figuring out you have to do, and it largely isn’t signposted too. Everything logically fits together so it didn’t feel unfair; in fact it felt rewarding and immersive to have to tune into the surroundings. One puzzle I struggled with personally before a teammate figured it out definitely felt like all the information was there, I was just missing a crucial bit of information. So a full thumbs-up on the puzzle difficulty. Have a coffee beforehand!

A couple of the puzzles suffered a little bit from a long feedback time between the player action and the confirmation or otherwise of the room. This felt more like a technical issue than artificial difficulty; the room relied quite heavily on various bits of wireless magic and the lag made those parts way more challenging than they should have been.

The puzzle flow was very linear (the intro video even mentions this) which was just about acceptable for my team of three people, where our combined brainpower was often needed, I think for a team of five this could quite easily lead to people hanging around not being able to contribute (some puzzles definitely didn’t have room for five people to crowd around). There was one section that needed the physicality of all three of us, but aside from that, a single person could go through this room if they had their wits about them. Even some more things like needing simultaneous across-the-room button presses in more places might have made this less of a problem.

Hint system

Hints were delivered by the GM via an iPad. We didn’t request any directly, but the GM noticed us struggling at one point and asked if we needed a hint, which we took. It was a good hint too; not solving the problem but enough of a pointer to make some things click in our heads and send us in the right direction.

The time remaining was also displayed on the iPad.

Finale

There wasn’t a big finale, but there was a strong sense of progression through the room as a whole. I found myself not being really sure at what point we were going to reach the end until we were actually standing back in the corridor again. In retrospect a few things were signalled.

Debriefing

Our GM was very keen to take us through the narrative of the room afterwards, checking that we’d understood all the plot points and so on. She also showed us some of the remote systems on her iPad that she could use to manually trigger or reset various puzzles. I don’t think I’ve ever been shown this unprompted before by a GM and I found it interesting, though as one of my teammates put it, the vibe we got was “look at how clever this room is!” rather than “your team did great at solving this!”, which isn’t necessarily what you want after 90 minutes of puzzle solving.

#58: Enigma Quests (London) – School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

A game well suited for beginners but not a lot to engage more practised escape room players.

Rating:	★★ (Not recommended)
Location:	London
Team:	AMPDG + 2
Date:	19 October 2021
Hints taken:	0
Time:	36m
URL:	Enigma Quests

Front & Briefing

This was my first room since before the pandemic and the first room ever for two of our team. The place was easy to find, near Liverpool Street in London – an extremely central location for an escape room. The front door is on street level, leading immediately to a stairwell to the entrance area, which was pretty cramped, especially since there was a team also waiting for one of their other rooms at the same time as us.

The GM took us through the basics and gave us a chance to use the loo and stash our coats before leading us into the room.

Theme

This was a pretty straightforward Harry Potter “inspired” room. The storyline is simply that this is your end of year exam, and you must find up to six awards during the hour timeslot. The room itself had the feeling of a relatively on-brand wizard’s office, and the storyline disappeared pretty quickly; this was rummaging around for clues rather than sitting down at a desk with some papers.

The quality of the build was generally good; the sort of homemade-but-to-a-high-standard decoration that you generally expect for this price range. Certain parts let it down; in particular the use of obviously electronic items that hadn’t been very effectively masked as magical items, and the odd supposed-to-be-a-surprise reveal that all the seasoned players spotted immediately.

Puzzles

One thing that I particularly liked about this room was that there was generally always something for all five of the team members to be doing, even if it was hunting for items, which were plentiful but not unfairly hidden. In fact, some of the hiding places were quite fun; perhaps it’s just because of my hiatus from escape rooms but this part actually felt fun.

The non-searching puzzles were broadly themed according to the in-universe classes you might have taken; there was a maths puzzle, some reading comprehension, some basic potion-making, etc. If these sound like you might be able to find something similar on the back of a newspaper, that’s unfortunately because a lot of them could have been; the solutions themselves were applied to the physicality of the room but actually solving them was a pen and paper affair.

Parts of the room were lit particularly moodily, which was okay for the most part, but felt like artificial difficulty in other places, particularly the finale.

Hint system

Hints were delivered by voice by the GM on request. We didn’t actually request any, though the GM did make an announcement near the start that felt like a hint, except we were well on the way to solving the thing in question at the time, so I assume it was scripted.

The time was provided with the use of an hourglass prop, which was a nice on-theme touch.

Finale

There was a finale, and it was a fun one, if slightly let down by the build quality of the area. We definitely felt like we’d ended the game on a high point.

Debriefing

The GM awarded us our “exam certificates” and took a photo of the team, which was emailed to us afterwards. Having finished in 36 minutes (apparently their best time was around 25 minutes) the GM was particularly enthusiastic about telling us how well we’d done, especially on parts such as the maths puzzle which he’s known some teams to take twenty minutes on alone. (I feel this highlights the issue with putting a maths puzzle into an escape room…)

I’m having a lot of trouble deciding whether to give this two stars (“not recommended”) or three stars (“recommended”). For beginners, it was an okay first room, and parts of it were genuinely fun. It was quite non-linear, too. On the other hand, it took us barely over half the time; it sounds like it was relying on people’s book smarts being less than ours to pad out the rest of the hour; and none of the puzzles were at all memorable. It’d be fine for a work team-building exercise (and, given its location, I’m sure they had that in mind) but I think anyone who’s done more than a dozen rooms would find nothing new here.

Access Escape (online) – Escape the Mailbox series

A set of e-mail-based games that provide a pleasant distraction for a quarter of an hour each month. Impressive, especially since they’re entirely free to play.

Rating:	★★★★ (Highly recommended)
Location:	Online
Team:	Just me!
Date:	2021
Hints taken:	Average of 1 per game
Time:	Average of 11m55 per game
URL:	Escape the Mailbox

Front & Briefing

I can’t remember how I was directed to Access Escape, but I subscribed to their monthly mailing list in October 2020 when it started up. I started playing their free “Escape the Mailbox” mini-games in February, so this is a review of the four most recent games (You’ve got Ghost Mail, Carnival of Curiosities, A Shuttle Shambles, and The Loco Love Tester) which I feel have given me a good sense of the series of a whole.

Getting started on any game is easy; just reply to the initial mailing list e-mail with “start” at the top of the message whenever you want, and get ready to start hitting refresh on your inbox!

Theme

Each mini-game has a basic setup and narrative, which forms a rough framework for each of the puzzles. The e-mails are all plain text and most of the games take the form of some kind of conversation, for instance via text message with a friend, or sending responses to a computer’s challenges.

The writing is fairly functional, without a huge amount of flair, essentially just there to set up the next puzzle. I would have liked a bit more interactive-fiction-style storytelling, and I think this could be done in a way that subtly hinted at some of the puzzles (the code for the final puzzle in You’ve got Ghost Mail springs to mind, which otherwise needed a realisation that I don’t think a lot of people would easily jump to), but this is a matter of personal preference, and for people who just like solving puzzles, it’s perfectly adequate, if occasionally in need of a proof-reader.

Puzzles

The system that Access Escape are using works quite well, essentially looking for the correct answer in your e-mail reply, and either replying with the next puzzle if you get it right, or suggesting you try again or ask for a clue if you don’t. The puzzle are linear (you get one at a time), though don’t particularly build upon each other; I’m not sure if this is a limitation of the e-mail platform or just the style the creators have picked.

While it’s usually obvious what you need to reply with, I’ve occasionally got it wrong, and it would be nice if the game anticipated that a little and replied with a clarification, or made it clearer in the puzzle-setting e-mail.

Being online, the creators have embraced the idea that it’s easy to google for things, so unlike in-person escape rooms, there is some outside knowledge required, and they assume it’s something you can google. While this is mostly true, I’ve found that in some cases they require you to find a particular google result, or perhaps have some knowledge of the subject area to aid you. I had to give up on one puzzle in A Shuttle Shambles that asked for a scientific fact that actually varies over time, and none of the obvious answers on Wikipedia seemed to be the version of the fact they had in mind!

Occasionally the need to google takes over a bit. For one puzzle in Carnival of Curiosities, I found myself needing to search for a dozen or so items to cross-reference a hint in the initial puzzle setup in order to solve it, unless I was missing a different, more obvious, way to solve it.

Overall though, they’re enjoyable little mini-puzzles. I’ve often had to bring up a text editor (or even a spreadsheet for a grid!) to do some working out in (a sheet of paper would work too), and some of the solutions have been inventive in ways that I’d consider excellent even in an in-person room.

Hint system

Replying to any message with the word “clue” gets you a response with a pre-defined hint, and most of the clues I’ve got get increasingly more specific the more times you repeat your call for help, until they just hand you the answer if you need it. There’s no logic to determine if your previous guesses were on the right track or not, so often you will sometimes need to skip through a couple of hints before you get to something useful.

Overall they have judged the content of the clues well, and I haven’t often had to take more than one (if any) in any game.

Finale

Some of the games have a sense of progression supplied by the narrative, but there’s no indication of how many puzzles there are in advance, or when you’re on the final puzzle. But for fifteen-minute mini-games, I think that’s fine.

Debriefing

Shortly after finishing the last puzzle, you get a nice congratulatory e-mail, which contains your time, links to share on social media, and links to previous games in the series if you want to jump to those.

I really like that they’re able to tell you your time, as it adds a sense of urgency to the solving without imposing a time limit, and means you get to compare your time with friends afterwards. Just keep refreshing your inbox and hope your wifi doesn’t go down!

ClueQuest Print+Cut+Escape – Humanity 2.0

Full disclosure: ClueQuest gave my team a free play to review this game.

This was a reasonable distraction during an otherwise unused (total of) three hours for us. Ultimately I don’t think this sort of game was quite suited to our team; we enjoy the dramatic elements of real-life escape rooms which would have been difficult to reproduce on paper and screen, and it lacked the sense of tension of tabletop games that allow you to fail (and replay) such as, say, Forbidden Island. The puzzles were adequate but struggled to hold our attention on their own. The price (£12) is a little high given that you can get a much more polished single-use play-at-home game-in-a-box for a just slightly higher price, though these games are to help offset the rent of ClueQuest’s physical space during lockdown, so it doesn’t feel like it would be money wasted.

Location:	At home
Team:	Rhubarb Rhubarb
Date:	18 July 2020
Hints taken:	0
Time:	2h1m
URL:	ClueQuest

Front & Briefing

I don’t currently have the means to meet with my teammates physically, so we played this over a video call, screen-sharing the website that contains the timer and a few other bits and pieces. We had a go at sharing the physical tabletop over webcam since only two of us had a printer, but realistically I think every remote player needs to have a copy of the material (and in fairness, ClueQuest’s FAQs say as much).

ClueQuest’s blog post on how to play remotely has a few more tips which are worth paying attention to; in particular cutting and folding everything before beginning the game. I would add that the cutting-out needs to be very precise. We managed to ignore these tips in our haste, and did the cutting out as we played, to avoid any spoilers with the puzzles, but it was time consuming enough that it broke our flow.

Both the printers we had struggled somewhat to print the black-and-white 30MB 20-page PDF, so you might need to allocate a bit of time beforehand for printer debugging. Alternatively you can have the material posted to you, but I wouldn’t say the extra £13 for the pre-printed pack is worth this.

Theme

I’ve only played two play-at-home escape games before; both from the Exit: The Game series from Cluedini, so I had a sense of what sort of theming and mood could be achieved from a paper product, and we weren’t expecting very much ambience.

ClueQuest’s physical games haven’t generally been very strong on theming (with Origenes being a notable exception) and this was also the case here. The art style in the printouts is quite varied which made the game seem a little thrown-together.

I was curious about ClueQuest’s play-at-home games because they featured an online aspect, which I imagined could be used to increase immersion, and screen sharing worked quite well for it, so it was a shame it wasn’t really used for anything more than entering answers, and not generally in very creative ways either.

Puzzles

It felt like the game was a little short on puzzles, though I’ve never actually counted the number of puzzles in a physical room before, so I shan’t put any numbers here; it may just have felt that way because we lost flow due to taking time cutting them out before being able to solve them.

The puzzles didn’t entirely benefit from being physical puzzles either; a lot of the time one of us had solved it on-screen from the PDF before I’d finished cutting out my copy, and it felt like they had reached the limits of what is possible without any props other than paper and scissors.

One puzzle was only solvable by one of us due to my print-out not being good enough quality; I feel there would have ways to construct that particular puzzle better suited to the medium, too. Other puzzles could have been quite cool if integrated into a physical room and perhaps split into a search part, and I would have loved to have seen a professionally-created physical version of the final puzzle; as it was, it was fiddly, and the answer input on the website was picky enough that we thought we’d found an alternative solution they hadn’t coded for (and we think we actually did for another puzzle).

Online Interface

Once you’ve entered your purchase code you’re given a lobby area with a download link to the PDF, and a button to start the game.

The timer for the game counts up rather than down, which I can understand the reasoning for but did take some of the enjoyable time pressure off. More frustratingly, I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that the timer pauses between chapters to give you a chance to cut out the next set of puzzles, but for us it didn’t (in fact, I accidentally re-loaded the page a week later while writing this review, and it’s still there, counting up!)

I would have liked to have seen more multimedia on the site; in particular to replace the couple of pages of text in the PDF which felt like it should have a GM or video reading out.

The user interface could do with some work too; in one instance we entered a whole set of answers, then realised that each textbox had a separate submit button, and clicking that cleared the other textboxes! Fortunately we’d also written them down beforehand so we didn’t have to re-solve any puzzles.

There was a hint button for each puzzle or set of puzzles, though we didn’t use it.

Finale

There was a sense of story progression if you’d been following along with the loose story-line of the game, but other than that the final couple of puzzles didn’t feel materially different to the other ones in the game.

Debriefing

The game left us with a congratulatory message, and left us to discuss amongst ourselves. This seemed adequate for a play-at-home game, though perhaps a few more stats (and actually stopping the timer!) might have been appreciated.

#57: Arctic Escape (Tromsø) – VX Snatcher

A game that flowed extremely well, with nice ambience in fitting with the theme, without getting in the way of some smart and creative puzzles.

Rating:	★★★ (Recommended)
Location:	Tromsø
Team:	Rhubarb Rhubarb
Date:	16 February 2020
Hints taken:	0
Time:	50m39
URL:	Arctic Escape

Front & Briefing

We found ourselves unexpectedly back in Tromsø in northern Norway and, confused by the shining light in the sky, headed to Arctic Escape’s “bloody dungeon” for the one game we hadn’t played last time.

The GM recognised us from a couple of months ago and we had a nice chat before she led us into the room – blindfolded this time! You’re told during the briefing that the team starts split up into two groups, so if you have a team of three as we did, have a think about who wants to be on their own to start with – though they’re not entirely isolated.

Theme

This is a serial killer’s workshop, and pretty believable in that respect if you’re willing to suspend disbelief. While billed as a scary room, there are no jump scares but the ambience fits the theme well and there aren’t any tongue-in-cheek elements.

Norway’s health and saftey rules must be a little less stringent than the UK’s because, although we were told how to get out in an emergency, there were a couple of sharp objects around and one thing in particular you wouldn’t want to get in your eye. Not too big a deal but I’d advise caution while rummaging through things.

Puzzles

This room had a really good flow to it, and we all came away from it feeling like we’d all been really on the ball this game. It was generally always clear what puzzle(s) needed to be solved and there weren’t too many loose ends around at any time, though enough to keep everyone occupied. There were some novel ideas for the puzzles, which tended towards getting codes for padlocks, but it didn’t feel tired for it. The creators also made good use of the two-cell starting positions, with some nice bits that required cooperation between members.

Hint system

Hints were via a screen that also showed the countdown timer. Our GM was well tuned to us by now, and clearly paying attention to us too. At one point we were discussing whether to ask for a hint and some text popped up on the screen saying she could give us a hint if we wanted but we were doing great for time. In the end we solved the puzzle shortly afterwards without a hint, but I think it takes some confidence and experience on the GM’s part to do that – imagine if we’d run out of time later!

The main other thing that appeared on the screen seemed to have been programmed in; depending on the state of the room it may have been non-obvious what effect taking a certain action had caused, and the message was just to look in a particular place if you hadn’t already noticed. Having played some rooms elsewhere where cause and effect has been difficult to determine, I think this was a good call.

Finale

No particular finale here, though during the briefing we’d been told what item the final puzzle involved, so we had a rough idea what we were working towards.

Debriefing

As with most other rooms outside the UK, payment is taken after the game, and there were no team photos, scoreboards or anything like that, just a nice chat with the GM! (Though I’m sure she would have taken a photo of us if we’d asked.) We didn’t have any questions about the room but based on past rooms here they have been happy to show us anything we had been stuck on.

Unfortunately they don’t have any new games in the works for the foreseeable future, but if you find yourself in Tromsø I would definitely book out their existing rooms.

#55: Excape (Exmouth) – E=MC Scared!

The theming in E=MC Scared! was done to a decent standard, but the puzzles were unsatisfying. I feel the creators, while enthusiastic, could have done with some more beta testing before opening to get the experience pinned down better. Playable, but unfortunately I can’t recommend it for enthusiasts.

Rating:	★★ (Not recommended)
Location:	Exmouth
Team:	Family of 5
Date:	28 December 2019
Hints taken:	2
Time:	Failed!
URL:	Excape

Front & Briefing

Occupying some office space above a bank in Exmouth town centre, Excape is easy to find and after being buzzed in we went up a flight of steps to their floor. Both their current rooms are attached to a small mostly undecorated lobby, and while the rooms aren’t heated, our host did offer us a hot chocolate to get us warmed up.

The GM gave us a quick run-down of the story: we are schoolchildren trapped by “Professor von Doomington” and we need to escape before he gets back in 60 minutes. Everyone is also given a school tie and cap to wear, which is a little gimmicky for my taste but I could see other teams enjoying it.

Theme

As the title of the game suggests, this is tongue-in-cheek/twee horror, with a school science lab overtone. The storyline immediately falls apart as it appears that we need to break into the place rather than escape it, but it was functional and the game was fitted out to a good standard.

Puzzles

Aside from a couple of inventive physical puzzles the game was a let down in terms of both puzzle conception and execution. There were red herrings all over the place; one puzzle in particular was a case of trying nearly everything in the room in turn. I had deliberately overlooked one part because I knew I would be irritated if it was what I suspected, and it turned out to be so when we got a hint for it. “A classic escape room puzzle!” exclaimed the GM when someone mentioned it in the debrief.

This seemed to be a trend: the game relied on all-too-common tropes; for instance another puzzle basically required you to have encountered the same sort of thing done more logically elsewhere in order to know what to do; there was absolutely no hint I noticed to signpost it.

We also had what I would say was a technical failure due to doing two things in the wrong order that required me to apply my knowledge as a software developer to realise there was a problem and fix, and the GM didn’t seem to understand when I described the problem to him afterwards. I could go on; the game felt like irritation after irritation. There were also several unresolved padlocks by the end of the game which was rather unsatisfying.

Hint system

We’d been given a walkie-talkie during the briefing and checked it was working, but no other guidance as to how hints would be given. I hadn’t thought to ask in the briefing, but we had all assumed the GM would come on the radio every now and then if we were getting stuck. Eventually we realised during the game that this was probably wrong and asked for a hint. At a guess we were actually somewhat behind time by that point.

Finale

We ran out of time half-way through solving the final padlock, unfortunately! The room boasted a device that looked like it might have made for a fun success condition, but we didn’t get to see it. The GM did a good job at crafting a good ending for us nonetheless, which is always appreciated in the case of a failure.

While the team definitely wasn’t playing at their best for that room, I do feel that the technical issue we had and an earlier puzzle that could have done with having some maintenance, plus the other issues mentioned above, did cost us the couple of minutes we would have needed to get the last bit done.

Debriefing

The GM was happy to answer questions within the room after we’d finished, and took a team photo which was e-mailed to all the team members afterwards.

#54: Arctic Escape (Tromsø) – The Backroom

Well executed both for theme and puzzles, The Backroom was a highly enjoyable game and while the theme wasn’t one I would naturally be drawn to, this didn’t detract from it being very enjoyable!

Rating:	★★★ (Recommended)
Location:	Tromsø
Team:	Rhubarb Rhubarb
Date:	22 December 2019
Hints taken:	3
Time:	55m33s
URL:	Arctic Escape

Front & Briefing

Our GM(s) from Carla’s Secret (#53) sat us down to watch the video introduction for The Backroom, a sequel to John Winter’s Office (#52), before leading us into the room. John Winter has been growing his empire, but a raid at the local bar hosting his illegal gambling has scared him and his associates away for an hour and you must collect the names of those associates before they return.

Theme

The room is atmospheric when you enter and a step up from the first John Winter room in terms of décor and immersion, and, size aside, feels like a real pub.

Puzzles

We missed quite an obvious thing to begin with that we took a clue for immediately, but after that everything flowed fairly well. There was a good mix of puzzles too, including one that I hadn’t come across anything like before (funnily enough, until the very next game I played elsewhere) which was really well executed and relied on a slightly different skill set to the usual escape room fare. It was difficult to fault any of the puzzles, in fact. Arctic Escape also solidified themselves in my mind, after Carla’s Room, as being expert hide-and-seekers with some great moments of inspiration leading to finding an item!

Hint system

As with the other two rooms we played, the GM cued us for hints rather than just dishing them out, except for the Very Obvious Thing we missed right at the start, which was a good judgement call. I think we took a couple of search hints, and one regarding a cultural difference between the UK and Norway which I should absolutely not have needed a hint for, oops!

Finale

No particular finale, but unlike other games where you’ve been collecting items from a list, the list of criminal names didn’t feel like we were just scrambling around for the last item forever, so it was much more satisfying.

Debriefing

We had a really nice chat with the GM and game designer afterwards, who had picked up that we were all experienced players and we exchanged notes about other rooms we’d played. It’s surprising that some venues can be internationally renowned, and at least I’d rated one of them as such here!

Unusually, there wasn’t a photo op for any of our games with Arctic Escape, though their Facebook page shows some group photos, so perhaps it was an oversight when we visited.

#53: Arctic Escape (Tromsø) – Carla’s Secret

A real joy to play, with great set design and a nice range of puzzles with enthusiastic GMs with a strong theme. This was my favourite of the three Arctic Escape games I played.

Rating:	★★★★ (Highly recommended)
Location:	Tromsø
Team:	Rhubarb Rhubarb
Date:	22 December 2019
Hints taken:	1
Time:	Unknown (lost notes – about 55m)
URL:	Arctic Escape

Front & Briefing

We had time to have a quick wander around Tromsø including the very nearby Tromsø Cathedral (the yellow wooden one, not the Arctic Cathedral across the bridge) before returning to “the world’s northernmost escape room” to play their most recent game, Carla’s Secret.

The GM mentioned that this game was made in response to their previous, scary, game, VX Snatcher (#57) (which we didn’t play because we’re not keen on scary games*) and was supposed to be the absolute opposite, and I’d say they pulled this off. A young girl called Carla has a friendly monster in her bedroom, and needs to persuade it to provide proof of its existence and that she’s not just imagining it.

[Edit: we played VX Snatcher later when our completionist streak kicked in. It was definitely a contrast!]

Theme

This is an absolutely beautiful escape room and a great example of how everyday items can be used to fashion a great game. Upon entering the room looks just like you’ve entered a 9-year-old girl’s room, and everything stays in keeping with this. It’s bright, colourful, and a generally fun place to hunt around for clues in.

Puzzles

We were the first group to play the room in English, and they’d done a great job at making any text clues bilingual. Despite the everyday setting, the puzzles were varied and creative, with plenty of nods to the sort of pop culture that would keep children entertained (and us adults too, for that matter) without requiring any outside knowledge, plus some rather fiendish ones that I felt pretty pleased with myself for figuring out.

Hint system

Hints were via a screen that also showed the countdown timer. We had agreed with the GM beforehand that we’d like to be asked before getting any hints, and found the “hint available” text appearing on the screen every so often a nice way of going about it. I think we took just one hint, for a search fail that the GM said afterwards was a commonly missed thing and they were considering moving. I hope they don’t, because it was by no means impossible and was a great kick-yourself moment when they point it out!

Finale

Given the theme we had certain expectations of what the ending might involve, and we weren’t left disappointed in this regard. The ending had us all grinning.

Debriefing

A quick debriefing this time but with both the staff GMs around. They’re clearly proud of this room (and their other most recent game, VX Snatcher) and their enthusiasm shows. They’d also managed re-arranged their schedule in order to get us into the final game of the night immediately rather than sending us out into the cold for an hour, which we very much appreciated, so we went straight into The Backroom (#54)!

#52: Arctic Escape (Tromsø) – John Winter’s Office

A well-designed room with smart puzzles and a good atmosphere created from off-the-shelf items.

Rating:	★★★ (Recommended)
Location:	Tromsø
Team:	Rhubarb Rhubarb
Date:	22 December 2019
Hints taken:	3
Time:	51m17s
URL:	Arctic Escape

Front & Briefing

Arctic Escape claims to be the world’s northernmost escape room and deep into polar night with snow on the ground and streetlights on at 13:30 this was easy enough to believe! We were greeted by an enthusiastic GM and after a quick chat discussing how we wanted our hints, the briefing took the form of a video shown in the lobby before we were led to the room. In short, the aim was to find incriminating evidence of suspected criminal John Winter in his office before he returns in 60 minutes’ time.

Theme

The room was a pretty standard office theme with a couple of surprises, but executed to a high standard and with plenty of novel uses of off-the-shelf props.

Puzzles

A good mix, including some we hadn’t come across before, which is all the more impressive given the fairly standard theme and tech level of the room. I think everyone in the team came away with a favourite puzzle afterwards too.

Hint system

Hints were displayed in text on a screen that also showed the countdown timer. We had agreed with the GM beforehand that we’d like to be asked before getting any hints, and found the “hint available” text appearing on the screen with an audio cue every so often a nice way of going about it. We took 3 clues; one was a search fail, the other two were logic steps we hadn’t figured out but probably should have!

Finale

No finale to speak of, but it was clear when you’d finished because of finding the evidence mentioned in the briefing.

Debriefing

Seemingly commonly for rooms outside the UK we weren’t greeted by the GM until we got back to the front desk. They ran through any questions we had, then sent us on our way; we had our next room with them (Carla’s Secret (#53)) booked in 40 minutes’ time!