The Lost Tomb @ Quest Room

My grandfather had dedicated his life to discovering a certain tomb in Egypt. One day I receive a letter from him – he has discovered the tomb, but is now too old to explore it himself. Armed with his notes I enter The Lost Tomb to discover the treasures within.

General Details

“The Lost Tomb”
Quest Room, 13 Cordelia Street, South Brisbane 4101
60 minutes
2-6 players allowed
Listed difficulty: Challenging
Website

How We Played

21 April 2018
2 players
Succeeded
Hints: 1
53 minutes

The Experience

As I have come to expect from Quest Room, The Lost Tomb envelops you in a beautiful, convincing space. Armed with a flickering torch each and a few dog-eared pages of notes, we crawled, lifted, turned, pushed and explored our way through the pitch-black tomb.

The puzzles all feel very appropriate to the Tomb Raider vibe, including ancient riddles and carvings to ponder. Quest Room has put a great deal of effort into ensuring every prop feels like it belongs and they have succeeded admirably. Everything feels like it belongs. One prop has a particularly magical effect that will make you feel like Indiana Jones.

It is important to note that this room has some accessibility issues as it requires crawling. There isn’t any way around this built into the room unfortunately and the crawling section is right at the start, meaning those with mobility issues will miss almost the entirety of The Lost Tomb.

Speaking of accessibility, this is also a dark room. The torches are thematically perfect, but people who have difficulty with darkness may wish to make their concerns known to the gamemaster just in case. There are no scary elements in the room – it is just dark.

Puzzle Design

The Lost Tomb features a path-based structure in which a series of puzzle strands contribute to an overarching goal. Each of these paths is logically connected not only to the theme but to the overall goal, and each results in a satisfying discovery.

Due to the open structure, large teams may find they can blitz this room without much trouble since there are not a huge number of puzzles. I actually found a team of two to be perfect, as we each contributed to all puzzles and got to see everything. There are some really fun moments in The Lost Tomb, and in a larger group you may not get to see everything.

We had some problems with the darkness obscuring an important detail in a certain puzzle, creating considerable confusion. The owners are aware of this, and I suspect it will be fixed soon. There are also a couple of hidden items that are a little tricky to find because players may assume certain props are not moveable. When a room has so many automated components, it becomes easy to expect that everything will just open automatically. Your mileage may vary on this point – I tend to be pretty slack when it comes to experimenting with props, so often miss hidden items.

At the start of the room you receive notes from your Grandfather, which was a really nice way of tying all the puzzles into a something that felt cohesive. The notes provide pieces of information that are relevant to different puzzles, which ensures everything feels connected even though each puzzle belongs to its own path. It also allows for some puzzles that incorporate Egyptian mythology and hieroglyphics in a manner that flows nicely and doesn’t feel forced.

The Bottom Line

The Lost Tomb is an immersive room with tactile puzzles that make you feel like Indiana Jones or Lara Croft. It’s unlikely to tax anyone’s critical faculties, but everything in it is physical and satisfying. Even though it has an open puzzle structure, I think it is better for a smaller team due to some chokepoints and the fact that a large team could spread out and blitz through the puzzles very quickly. It is also very important that no members of the team have mobility issues. If you enjoyed the style of Quest Room’s Sherlocked room, I definitely recommend booking yourself into The Lost Tomb.

Total Carnage @ Cryptology Chermside

I seem to be getting into a habit of being captured by serial killers. This time I found myself cuffed to the floor in a pitch black room. The killer would return soon, and I’d need to escape to avoid the Total Carnage they were bringing.

General Details

“Total Carnage”
Cryptology, Kingpin Bowling, Chermside Shopping Centre
60 minutes
2-6 players allowed
Listed difficulty: 9.5/10
Website

How We Played

2 October 2017
3 players
Succeeded
Hints: 1 official, many extras
Around 45 minutes

The Experience

Cryptology is a business similar to Exitus. It is an offshoot of a large entertainment franchise surrounded with arcade machines and a bowling alley. It’s therefore better suited to parties or events rather than the more personal experiences of some of the independent escape room businesses.

It shares some of Exitus’ problems: sound leakage from the shopping centre and arcade undermine the room’s aura, the props were heavily worn (despite this being a newly opened business) and a more corporate, commercial approach to room design (noticeable in comparison to the inventive and experimental rooms I tried in Melbourne). However, Cryptology does improve on Exitus when it comes to staff, providing a dedicated gamemaster who watches and communicates with you the entire time.

In a way this is good, but it does draw attention to the biggest issue with Total Carnage: the effort to create a scary room is undermined by the company’s business practices. Some of the props and room design elements evoke an eerie feel, but it is undermined substantially when the gamemaster’s voice is constantly flowing from the room’s speakers. A pitch black room is a lot less scary when the light and sound of the surrounding arcade remains a constant companion.

Nevertheless, Total Carnage’s approach to set and prop design is a definite step up from the equivalent room in Exitus (Butcher’s Burrow). Though the room is fairly sparse, what is there fits the theme well. Unfortunately, the maintenance on some of the puzzle-essential props is lacking, making some details difficult to distinguish.

Though Total Carnage doesn’t do anything particularly imaginative with narrative, it does provide a decent amount of variety and interest in the activities it asks of you. The puzzles are also appropriate for the theme. Though Total Carnage does not go out of its way to offer anything truly innovative, enough care has gone into its design to avoid accusations of being a bland cash-in.

Do keep in mind that Total Carnage does require you to be comfortable with being handcuffed to the floor in the dark. There is not really any way to avoid this without skipping a chunk of the experience, so if that does not sound appealing this room may not be appropriate for you.

Puzzle Design

Though I found the puzzles in Total Carnage provided a decent amount of variety, there were some frustrations that definitely coloured my opinion of the room. Cryptology identifies Total Carnage as their hardest room, but apart from one or two clever twists to the puzzles, I found the difficulty to be frustrating more than it was fun.

The problem was insufficient indication of how puzzle elements combined, or what was required. There were cases where actions would provide a code, but with the numbers jumbled and no indication of how to order them. Similarly, there were devices that had to be used in a specific way, but provided no feedback to indicate this. This creates an anticlimactic finale due to a lack of instruction about how the final puzzles work.

The problem with these awkward design flaws is that the gamemaster is required to constantly interject to inform players that they were doing the right thing before and just need to keep doing it, or to provide information that players have already intuited. It is frustrating rather than fun to sit around plugging various iterations of the same four digits into a keypad because the puzzle lacks information about how to order them.

Similarly, there are problems with hidden items. I have no problem with searching for objects as long as it is clear that there is a piece missing from a puzzle. In these cases, the puzzles appeared solvable, and the gamemaster needed to tell us we were missing something.

These flaws are frustrating because they undermine what is, at heart, a decent set of ideas with a couple of surprising and clever twists thrown in. With a bit more thought about communcating information to the player, Total Carnage could be a superb room.

The Bottom Line

Total Carnage is an enjoyable room that suits its role as an addition to the Chermside entertainment precinct. It doesn’t do anything particularly special or unique, but it provides a solid experience and ensures teams have a dedicated gamemaster, which is a step up from similar businesses.

There is a solid puzzle foundation here, but it needs a bit more consideration given to the game’s flow to help guide players through the experience. With these more intricate details solved, Total Carnage could easily go from frustrating to inspired.

I was invited to join the folks from Lock Me If You Can for this escape room experience. You can check out their escape room reviews here.

Circus @ Time Is Key

A circus master was looking for new acts to replace the recently departed magician, sharpshooter, clown, and strongman. We agreed to an audition – but would we regret joining this Circus?

General Details

“Circus”
Time is Key, 2–4 Alexander Avenue, Dandenong
90 minutes
2-6 players allowed
Difficulty unlisted
Website

How We Played

2 September 2017
2 players
Succeeded
Hints: 1
Approx 48 minutes

The Experience

Circus is scary. I’m not talking one or two jump scares. I’m not talking moody lighting or creepy music and sound effects. I’m talking fear-for-your-life levels of terror. We played Time is Key’s other room, Bradshaw Manor (review on its way), purportedly the scariest escape room in Melbourne, and we both felt it didn’t hold a candle to Circus.

This isn’t inherently a problem, but it did hurt the experience for one of us. See, we didn’t know Circus was going to be a scary room. I have been to other rooms that start innocuous before introducing a scary twist, but in those rooms the “scares” amount to little more than an eerie ambience.

Circus is more than that.

As such, I think it is extremely important that participants know in advance what they are signing up for. Though Bradshaw Manor is clearly identified as a scary room on Time is Key’s website, Circus is not. There are hints early on that “something is not right” but I can guarantee the finale goes further than you think it will.

I may seem to be belaboring the point, and perhaps I am, but this room had a profound effect on us, and it was not a good one. It left one of us emotionally distraught with a heightened sensitivity to many of the later rooms we attempted. More warning about what to expect is really required here, and perhaps even the option to tone things down – a possibility since the eerie music and lighting at the end were more than adequate for narrative purposes. In fact, I got the impression that the room is normally not as scary as it was for us, and that evening sessions have certain things added to make it scarier. Perhaps a daytime session would have suited us better (we originally planned to do it in the day, but were too late with the booking).

The shame of it is, this was otherwise one of our favourite rooms in Melbourne. The set design is superb, the narrative expertly interwoven into the puzzles. The room’s attention to detail is immaculate. And, though I just complained about the room’s scariness, my only real complaint is the lack of warning about how much the intensity ramps up. The scares demonstrated a mastery of sound effects, timing and atmosphere. One issue, however, is sound bleed between Circus and Bradshaw Manor. There are some very loud effects in the latter that we could hear easily in Circus. Given the rooms are built in an open warehouse space, I don’t have any real solution for this. It is not overly obtrusive (though the other team playing parallel to us was not that loud except for the occasional scream) but you will definitely hear things from the other room as you play.

Puzzle Design

Circus offers some ingenious puzzles that buy into the logic of misdirection, spectacle and madness that characterizes the circus. The narrative leads you through a series of linear challenges brilliantly themed around certain acts, making it ideal for smaller teams (though you may want to bring a few extra people for emotional support…) The puzzles gradually reveal a central mystery, and puzzle and narrative are deeply interrelated, which is fantastic.

The tasks themselves are all immensely enjoyable, making use of clever tricks to constantly confound your expectations. One puzzle might be a little controversial for many enthusiasts, but we loved the way it was implemented. Circus’ puzzles have a pleasing physicality, with lots of stuff to maneuver and play with.

I did have a small issue with the final puzzle, however. As you may already have guessed, Circus ramps up the tension in the final moments. The puzzle filling these moments has a bit of a trick to it, and unfortunately that trick has the potential to bring things to a crashing halt. This is bad for a team like ours, where at that stage one of us was having a major anxiety attack, but for other teams it could have the opposite effect of sucking the tension out of the moment and making it drag. This was more a problem with the timing of the puzzle than with the puzzle itself, as I find that simple process puzzles work best in these kinds of moments. What with everything else happening at that time it was easy to miss the puzzle’s trick. This probably wouldn’t have been such an issue without the more intense components of Circus’ final moments, so perhaps daytime sessions won’t have the same problems.

The Bottom Line

Circus is a phenomenal room. It ties narrative and puzzle design together expertly to create an immersive experience. Everything from the sound and lighting to the props has been thoughtfully placed and included. However, this is not a room for everyone. Publicity material for Circus is not, in my view, sufficiently open about how extreme the experience is. In particular, it should be made clear that there are differences to the game in nighttime sessions compared with daytime ones to give players more flexibility about how they wish to play. My experience at a nighttime session was extremely confronting, with a very real and immediate feeling of danger that goes beyond ordinary jump scares. Though there isn’t any real danger, it is a very realistic simulation, so you should seriously consider whether this is an appropriate room for your team.

Ex Libris @ Next Level Escape

A mysterious library. Portals to literary worlds. A ticking clock. And a mysterious name: Ex Libris.

General Details

“Ex Libris”
Next Level Escape, 37 Bligh Street, Sydney
75 minutes
2-6 players allowed
Difficulty unlisted
Website

How We Played

16 July 2017
3 players
Succeeded
Hints: Many
24 minutes 18 second complete main mission; 53 minutes 12 seconds complete side mission 1; 70 minutes 6 seconds complete side mission 2

The Experience

Ex Libris is evocative because it is so familiar. It draws on well-known works of literature (trust me, you’ll recognize them) to provide one of the most varied escape room themes I have seen. Though the space is small, it is crammed with distinctive areas. Despite the office environment limiting the immersion a tad, Ex Libris manages to draw players into clearly defined and different environments.

Ex Libris’ greatest strength, however, is its use of a narrator to provide hints and guide players. Perhaps you are carefully examining a mysterious discoloration on a desk when you hear, “After careful inspection, Andrew confirmed the stain was, indeed, a stain, and not relevant to the task.”

The narration fits the theme perfectly and has a bit of a Stanley Parable vibe – though we all agreed it wouldn’t have hurt for it to be a bit more sarcastic. It also ensures that when important automated moments occur, players are guided to the appropriate location to see what is happening.

Ex Libris makes good use of the limited space, packing it with surprises. Some are subtle – there are a ton of nonessential easter eggs hidden throughout the room, and little touches like musical stings accompanying certain actions give the experience a cohesive feeling.

Ex Libris’ other innovation is to have a fairly easy main quest, but to support that with a far more difficult series of optional objectives. This is a great idea – I am confident any team could escape easily, but more experienced teams would also get to hear the narrator’s dry wit, as the optional puzzles are considerably harder.

Puzzle Design

The puzzle structure in Ex Libris is subtly complex, with a smart opening that gradually opens multiple puzzle strands. Objectives are always obvious, though the vast array of different props and possible directions can become overwhelming. This makes the early moments of the game more difficult than the sum of its parts.

Ex Libris’ puzzles run the gamut from spatial reasoning, word puzzles, observation, and logic. Even the simple logic puzzles make clever use of props to ensure everything feels tactile and fun.

There is a lot of information hidden throughout Ex Libris. Some of it is not essential to solving the puzzles – we managed to skip a step due to our advanced codebreaking skills in one puzzle. Ordinarily this would be a problem, but the narrator prevents players from becoming caught up in irrelevant information, which allows Ex Libris to pack the space with clues, easter eggs, and red herrings.

The Bottom Line

The fact that Ex Libris succeeds to the extent that it does is almost entirely due to the attentive gamemaster. Without regular feedback from the entertaining narrator, players would likely be left lost and overwhelmed. The use of a narration manages to support Ex Libris’ storytelling, theme, and gameplay.

Though it might be a bit tight physically, Ex Libris contains enough action for a larger team, though the extra time and guidance means that smaller teams will also be able to manage. It is perfect for players who want to be challenged, but won’t get frustrated if they need a hint or two. Teams that don’t need any hints are missing out on Ex Libris’ best and most unique feature!

Other perspectives can be found at Lock Me If You Can, Escape Rooms in Sydney, and Escape Me.

In Memoriam @ Enigma Room

It was time to save a life. The woman was in a coma after a car accident, and it was up to us to save her. To do so we would travel into her memories to find the most precious of them all, her subconscious protecting it. Would we bring her back to reality, or would she remain In Memoriam?

General Details

“In Memoriam”
The Enigma Room, 602/262 Pitt Street, Sydney
60 minutes
2-6 players allowed
Difficulty unlisted
Website

How We Played

15 July 2017
2 players
Succeeded
Hints: 0
33 minutes 15 seconds

The Experience

A couple of years ago, The Enigma Room was at the forefront of escape room technology and experience. The industry has changed, with technology now commonplace and sets becoming more and more elaborate. In Memoriam cannot escape its office block trappings, and the architecture limits the opportunities for direct immersion.

Nevertheless, In Memoriam was one of our favourite rooms of the entire Sydney trip, a perfect example of how strong ideas and a thoughtful approach to narrative and puzzle design can coalesce in an exemplary experience. The greatest strength came from the innovative approach to narrative, with one of the most meaningful and emotionally resonant stories I have seen attempted in an escape room. In Memoriam tells its narrative with affection and heart as you delve into the patient’s memories.

Though the office venue limits immersion, In Memoriam sucks you in in other ways. A well-produced introductory video begins the experience, and flawlessly integrated tech draws you into the narrative world. Extraneous systems such as hints remain unobtrusive, with a tablet providing these if required. In Memoriam is a room of ideas, avoiding distraction and demonstrating its strength with clever, appropriate puzzles with actual significance to the narrative.

Puzzle Design

It feels a little cheap to break In Memoriam’s puzzles down to the basic tasks they require of you. The dry list is very much what you might expect: observation, association, math. Where In Memoriam shines is in the integration of the narrative and puzzles. In a way, the skill In Memoriam test most of all is your empathy, asking you to think carefully about the patient’s experiences.

Many of the puzzles are satisfyingly physical and draw on careful use of technology. The tasks required relate to the memories uncovered. The final few puzzles feel particularly appropriate.

Though I did feel like the room was a little easy and could perhaps have included a few more tasks, apparently my team of two escaped in the top 1% of times ever, so chalk that up to our experience on the day. According to our gamemaster, some teams find In Memoriam extremely difficult. Perhaps the empathetic component to some of the puzzles challenges some more than others.

The Bottom Line

In Memoriam is not as flashy as some of Sydney’s more recent constructions, but it still holds its own with excellent attention to narrative experience. The puzzles and tasks it asks of you interweave with that narrative. Furthermore, it includes some magical moments and real heart.

Other perspectives can be found at Lock Me If You Can, Escape Rooms in Sydney, Escape Room Reviews and Escape Room Hunters.

The Cabin @ The Cipher Room

Clutching our LAPD badges to our chest, we chased down our latest lead in a serial killer case. They’d left behind clues… almost as though they were trying to get caught. Would we find them in The Cabin?

General Details

“The Cabin”
The Cipher Room, 640 King Street, Newtown, Sydney
60 minutes
2-8 players allowed
Difficulty unlisted
Website

How We Played

15 July 2017
2 players
Succeeded
Hints: 2
53 minutes

The Experience

The Cabin truly floored me. The Cipher Room blindfolds participants before entering a room, a practice other venue also partake in that I traditionally haven’t seen the point of. For The Cabin, however, it makes total sense. You are completely transported into a dark, moody, abandoned cabin, with everything from the lighting, the sounds, even (though this was possibly psychosomatic) the smell contributing to the realism.

This realism could present a problem for some. Though The Cabin doesn’t have any jump scares, it is extremely dark and moody. The environment becomes increasingly foreboding, and towards the end my teammate was struggling a little with physical anxiety responses to the room. If you are of a nervous disposition and don’t like being freaked out, you might be better off playing one of The Cipher Room’s other family-friendly themes, which I am reliably informed have similarly strong theming.

The Cabin includes satisfyingly physical puzzles that feel entirely appropriate to the setting. Though these puzzles don’t exactly contribute to a narrative, they are cleverly and appropriately interwoven into each space. There is an emotional trajectory to the way players interact with the puzzles and set, even if those puzzles don’t contribute to concrete plot development.

Puzzle Design

Playing The Cabin felt a little like having my cake and eating it too. Not only was the set immaculately designed and presented, but the puzzles were varied, interesting, and challenging. There is an overall linear trajectory, though there are plenty of branching points where larger teams could work on different puzzles simultaneously. Clues are large and clear, so even when only one puzzle is available it is usually possible for more than one person to work on it simultaneously – and sometimes teamwork is essential.

The Cabin contained several bespoke handcrafted items that were extremely satisfying to use, offering something more interesting than a standard padlock. In keeping with the setting, obtrusive tech was entirely absent. Puzzles instead used props appropriate to the setting in interesting ways to provide clues.

While the object manipulation puzzles were a lot of fun, they tended to be simple tasks. The meat of the puzzling was clever association and observation puzzles. Some of these were ingenious, and none felt pointless or time-wasting.

We did find the puzzle flow to falter a little in the early part of the game due to dim light causing us to misread important information and the open, interwoven puzzle structure of that early part being quite difficult for a small team, but that has more to do with team dynamics than room quality. Fortunately, the gamemaster was constantly observing us and offered well-timed nudges towards the things we had missed.

The Bottom Line

The Cabin is one of the most impressive escape rooms I have ever played. The set is entirely believable – to the point where that might be confronting for some players. It is a challenging room that nevertheless remains fair. The care and attention to the props, set and puzzles is a credit to the team at The Cipher Room. It is worth the trip to Newtown to try out The Cabin.

Check out another review of The Cabin at Escape Rooms in Sydney.

Rescue the White Rose @ Second Telling Missions

Munich, 18 February, 1943. The White Rose anti-Nazi group is under threat. The Nazis have arrested Hans and Sophie Scholl, two important members, and it is only a matter of time before they find the basement containing a full list of White Rose members. Our mission: to find the list before the Gestapo arrive. We have just an hour to find the list and to Rescue the White Rose.

General Details

“Rescue the White Rose”
Second Telling, 397 King Street, Newtown, Sydney
60 minutes
2-7 players allowed
Difficulty unlisted
Website

How We Played

15 July 2017
2 players
Succeeded
Hints: 3
53 minutes

The Experience

Second Telling is themed entirely around resistance to the Nazis in World War Two. From the themes of each of its rooms, to the cute White Rose Café in the foyer, the venue transports you to another time.

The other unique aspect to Second Telling is its use of performance and actors to tell the story. Though their other room embeds the actor more into the experience, in Rescue the White Rose our gamemaster took on multiple roles while also guiding us carefully when we needed hints.

Rescue the White Rose has a story to tell, and that story evolves over the course of the game. I really loved the way extra objectives organically emerged from your actions and puzzle solving. This all culminates in an ending that masterfully circumnavigates the often anticlimactic finale of most escape rooms.

The tasks required to complete Rescue the White Rose revolve around period-appropriate props encouraging physical manipulation and play. Everything makes sense in the room’s context, and many of the codes and puzzles correspond to real ciphers from the time.

Puzzle Design

Rescue the White Rose has an intricate and interwoven path-based structure to its puzzles. There is always plenty to do, to the extent that our team of two became a little overwhelmed. This is one of the few rooms I have played where I recommend a larger team – ideally four or five.

The puzzles in Rescue the White Rose involve a variety of skills, but the standouts require you to manipulate props in interesting ways. Some of the puzzles use alternatives to standard combination locks that, though conceptually identical, add a bit of variety and thematic pizzazz.

The puzzles are fair and it is always clear when you are missing an item. It was almost always our own fault when we hit a wall – sometimes due to a lack of observation, and once due to a failure in deduction. There is one puzzle that could perhaps give a clearer indication when solved – we wasted a few minutes going through different iterations when our first answer was correct because there was no immediate feedback and it is not clear what the puzzle is going to do.

However, the mechanical inventiveness of the puzzles and the variety of cognitive approaches required means Rescue the White Rose has some of the most enjoyable, varied and interesting puzzles in the business. Their integration into the WW2 theme is masterful, and even large groups will find plenty to do.

The Bottom Line

Rescue the White Rose demonstrates that a good escape room doesn’t need flashy and elaborate sets. It instead offers a distillation of what is necessary in an escape room: variety of puzzles, an engaging narrative in which the puzzles make sense, and heaps of physical and mental tasks to complete.

It is wonderful to see an escape room venue develop a brand around a central theme or idea, and Second Telling is a perfect example of how a business can establish a strong sense of character and a cohesive vision. I’d love to see other venues try to tie their different rooms together to enable a storytelling experience extending from the welcome to departure. This thematic and narrative depth is supported by excellent puzzle design that continues to define the business.

If you’re in Sydney and have a team of four or more, Rescue the White Rose is a fantastic way to fill up some time.

For other perspectives, check out: Escape Me and Escape Room Sydney.

Art Heist @ Jetpack Theatre

We were down in Sydney recently checking out a gallery exhibition at The Wade Gallery. Asked to steal the famous painting The Fat Dragon, we waited until closing time to begin a dramatic Art Heist.

General Details

“Art Heist”
Jetpack Theatre pop-up, 404 New Canterbury Road, Dulwich Hill, Sydney
Around 45 minutes
1-4 players allowed
Ended August 2017
Website

How We Played

15 July 2017
3 players
Succeeded (sacrificing a team member)
Hints: 0

The Experience

Art Heist is not your average escape room. A hybrid between escape room and interactive theatre, it achieves its own unique feel. Though objective-oriented (like an escape room) it is almost completely free-form.

Actors playing guards add a great deal to the experience. Though we were never caught, so had limited interactions, it was really interesting listening to their banter, and they adapted fluidly to our actions. Art Heist relies on the quality of these actors, and they were perfect in every way. I never once thought of them as anything other than real guards.

The set is designed cleverly, with some cool interactive elements. Very little is out-of-bounds, and there is a use for almost everything. I’d also recommend spending some time observing the artworks before the heist proper begins – they are very entertaining! A lot of thought clearly went into the experience, and the result is a high-adrenaline experience that is sure to have you stifling laughter the entire time.

Puzzle Design

Jetpack Theatre provides plenty of stimuli in Art Heist, but it is up to you to plan and carry out the heist. The actors are incredible improvisers, reacting to our somewhat unconventional ploys with aplomb, which really made the experience.

The feel of Art Heist is very different to a standard escape room due to its open-ended structure. You have an objective, but there is no set path to achieving it. There are a couple of puzzle-like elements, but these are not the bulk of the experience (and can practically be ignored entirely).

As a result, Art Heist makes use of a completely different set of skills to standard escape rooms. Instead of using logic, deductive reasoning, maths, or association, you must use creative thinking, strategizing, social reasoning, and speedy improvisation.

Despite the choices, we never felt overwhelmed due to the thoughtful and generous provision of clues and visual indicators. It also helps that the game follows a sort of video game logic, and once you understand the rules it becomes easier to figure out what is possible. We are certainly no master thieves, but Art Heist allowed us to briefly believe we were with ingenious difficulty balance and responsive, adaptive actors.

The Bottom Line

In case it isn’t obvious already, Art Heist is a fantastic experience. Unfortunately it only had a limited run in Sydney during 2017. I do recommend keeping your eyes peeled for more escape room/interactive theatre hybrids. The presence of actors adds tension and excitement. The experience differs from regular escape rooms dramatically, less about impressive and clever designs and more about creating an immersive sandbox encouraging creativity and improvisation.

The Pharaoh’s Tomb tabletop game

On tour in Egypt, you explore Tutankhamen’s tomb. The door slams shut behind you – trapped! Can you escape The Pharaoh’s Tomb?

General Details

“The Pharaoh’s Tomb”
Kosmos, Exit: The Game series
60 minutes
1–6 players
Website

How We Played

13 July 2017
2 players
Succeeded
Hints: 1
51 minutes 36 seconds

The Experience

The experience of playing The Pharaoh’s Tomb is identical to that of the other games in the Exit series: The Abandoned Cabin and The Secret Lab. As usual, the card system works well, the art is nice, though sparse, and the game is mainly played with cardboard and paper.

The Pharaoh’s Tomb is destructible, more so perhaps even than the other games in the series. With the earlier iterations, there are workarounds for some of the destructible puzzles, but here there is one particular puzzle requiring destruction that would be difficult to reset.

Puzzle Design

Nevertheless, the designers’ willingness to commit to the single-use design approach opens The Pharaoh’s Tomb to some excellent puzzle design. One puzzle was by far the most inventive and rewarding in any escape room board game I have completed so far.

In general the puzzles had a good variety, with a mix of observation, manipulation and association puzzles, with a few more inventive ideas thrown into the mix. There were two puzzles in The Pharaoh’s Tomb that really pushed us to think outside of the box. One of these was the aforementioned favourite, while the other had problems. The idea behind the puzzle was fine, but certain important components were very difficult to see, even when we used a hint and were told exactly what we were looking for. The puzzle would work better (and be fairer) if the information was more visible.

It is also important to note that The Pharaoh’s Tomb is entirely linear, and I wouldn’t recommend more than two players. The components are small and some require physical manipulation, meaning it is difficult to find enough for lots of players to do.

The Bottom Line

The Pharaoh’s Tomb contained my favourite escape room board game puzzle, but it also demonstrated one of the issues with the outside-the-box thinking Exit encourages. Elements of the artwork made some of the puzzles rather obtuse. It remains a great example of the genre, and is highly recommended for small teams. However, this is the only escape room board game I have played where I honestly cannot think of any way to make it replayable. This is definitely a one-time-use experience, but a great one.

Secret of Dr Gravely’s Retreat tabletop game

After winning a health package for Foxcrest Retreat, we found ourselves trapped! Could we uncover the Secret of Dr Gravely’s Retreat?

General Details

“Secret of Dr Gravely’s Retreat”
ThinkFun, Escape the Room series
120 minutes (90 minutes if more than 3 players)
3-8 players (I don’t even recommend that many)
Website

How We Played

8 July 2017
3 players
Succeeded
Hints: 0
51 minutes 5 seconds (including bonus mission)

The Experience

Secret of Dr Gravely’s Retreat is the second in ThinkFun’s escape room board game series, following Mystery at the Stargazer’s Manor. Many of the observations I made about that game are true here. Secret of Dr Gravely’s Retreat has a surprisingly complex narrative communicated via a lot of text. If you prefer puzzling to reading, I’d recommend the Exit or Unlock! games. However, the more complex narrative provides better context for the game and allows the game to have branching pathways (though only to the extent that you may choose whether you complete the final few puzzles for a better ending).

The story in Secret of Dr Gravely’s Retreat is a lot darker than any other escape room board game I have played. It remains reasonably family friendly, though it’s worth noting that there are some images that are a tad disturbing or grotesque.

Secret of Dr Gravely’s Retreat is a step up from ThinkFun’s previous game in terms of the tactility of puzzles. I was very impressed with some of the ways the game utilised simple materials to create interesting physical puzzles.

Puzzle Design

Unfortunately, the tactility comes at the expense of teamwork. The recommended player count of 3–8 people is simply ludicrous. We found three players to be pushing it.

The problem is that the game follows an entirely linear structure, and the physical puzzles can only have one person working on them at a time. These puzzles tend to be experiment-oriented, so depend on you manipulating objects. As a result, for most of the game time only one person will have anything to do.

Unfortunately, these are also the most interesting puzzles. The more cerebral offerings that aren’t limited to a single player tend to lack depth, relying on simple observation or association. One or two challenging cerebral puzzles would have made Secret of Dr Gravely’s Retreat more appropriate for larger groups.

Fortunately, Secret of Dr Gravely’s Retreat is reusable. I recommend passing the game around a group and completing it separately rather than playing it through once with a large team.

The Bottom Line

Secret of Dr Gravely’s Retreat offers some of the best tactile puzzles in any escape room board game I have played. Unfortunately, this comes at the expense of its suitability for large groups. This is true of most escape room board games, though here the physical nature of the best puzzles makes the issue even more egregious.

Secret of Dr Gravely’s Retreat provides a strong narrative and thematically appropriate puzzles, making it surprisingly immersive for an escape room board game. I recommend it for small teams interested in playing around with interesting physical puzzles with a decent accompanying narrative.