Bruum Escape – The Search for the Magical Artifact (Review)

Location: Your Home via the Magic of the Internet!

Players: 2-4 connections (We recommend 3-5 players)

Price: €30-€50 depending on number of connections, see website for details

Time to Escape: 60 minutes

That voodoo you do…

Theme:

From the Bruum Escape website:

He angered the powerful fortune teller Tobar. Since that day his life has changed for the worse. Much worse! He wants to sneak into his trailer when it’s empty to fix things but can’t do it alone. He needs your help!

Gather a team and choose the most convenient moment to take action.

We will make sure that the fortune teller’s trailer will be empty enough time to give you the opportunity to help your client complete the mission.

He will be your eyes and your hands but you will be the minds of the operation.

All you need is a computer, an internet connection, the Zoom program and your skills in deciphering codes and solving puzzles.

Nobody said this will be just a game!

First Impressions:

One excellent thing about doing so many remote escape rooms like this one, is that we get to experience rooms we’d never get to play together live. Bruum Escape is located in Italy, and unfortunately, it’s somewhat cost prohibitive to ship our entire Keyed Up! team across the Atlantic in order to play escape rooms. However, for this one night, we all gathered together to enjoy an Italian escape, and I’m glad we did!

High Points:

The Search for the Magical Artifact takes place within a converted camper, and despite the small size of the room, there was an amazing amount of puzzling involved with the experience. Not only that, but we definitely felt as though we were in the caravan of a fortune teller rather than a simple camper, as the set design was well implemented, with spooky touches and awesome tech. Props and items hidden about the room all felt thematically appropriate, and at no point did we come across anything that was jarringly out of place or “because escape room-y.” While there was no inventory system, it never seemed like we needed one, with many items being self contained within the individual puzzles, and those things we needed to come back to were left in plain sight so that we wouldn’t forget about them. Despite the fact that we were thousands of miles away from the room, we had no issues with lag or dropped connections, which can sometimes be a problem with rooms that are a world away. We found our Game Master/Avatar to be very responsive, doing a fantastic job of following our commands while still showing off the room in all it’s glory. Searching is mainly automated, and while we needed to let him know where and what we’d like our Avatar to search, we didn’t need to be overly specific, allowing for general areas to be scoped out quickly, revealing what was important intuitively.

Puzzles are incredibly creative, and as I’ve said previously, there’s an impressively dense amount of enigmas hidden within the fortune teller’s caravan! The game is mostly non-linear, so when we came across something that had us stumped, we were easily able to make a note of it and move along to another puzzle while pondering the significance of various clues and items. Due to this, the game flow of the room was very smooth, as though we played through the game linearly due to the nature of this sort of adventure, we were never really stuck on one part of the game floundering and unable to progress. There is a great mix of puzzle types, and each member of our team was able to contribute based off of their strengths, and it was fantastic working through many of the room’s satisfying moments of revelation together. Many of the interactions feel magical, utilizing tech and the style of game to allow us to perform some actions that we’d never be allowed to carry out in an escape room normally! This was definitely one of the most creative games we’ve experienced during lock-down.

Low Points:

One particular type of wordplay shows up a couple times, so if your team isn’t a fan of that sort of thing, these interactions may be somewhat underwhelming, however, we did not mind. The camera itself could be somewhat blurry at times, taking precious moments to refocus before we were able to see what we needed to. A couple of moments during the game definitely felt as though they presented more of a solo type challenge, making more sense for one player to take the ball and run with it while the others waited for them to come to the solution. Usually this isn’t much of a problem, but during this type of game, it stymies some of the flow for the player that isn’t actively working on something.

Verdict:

Bruum Escape delivered a magical escape from lock-down for us with The Search for the Magical Artifact! We really loved our trip to Italy (at 1 am Italian time!) for this room, and we had a great time working through this room with our excellent Game Master! I highly recommend checking this one out, regardless of skill level, as there’s plenty to challenge all sorts. Book your time in the fortune teller’s caravan here!

9/10 (Excellent)

Full Disclosure: Bruum Escape provided our team with a complementary game.