Location: Your Home via the Magic of the Internet!
Players: 1-6 (We recommend 2-5 players)
Price: £35.00-40.00 per team (About $45.71-52.24 USD at the time of writing)
Time to Escape: 75 minutes
How deep does this rabbit hole go?
Theme:
From the Swamp Motel website:
Plymouth Point is an immersive, online detective game that takes you from the comfy confines of the Plymouth Point Residents Watch into the heart of a deeply unsettling conspiracy. Played on an internet browser, teams will need to follow clues, crack codes and hack passwords in an attempt to find out why a missing resident has vanished. Part escape room, part immersive theatre and all online, Plymouth Point relies on you to peel back the layers of the mystery to find Ivy before it’s too late.
First Impressions:
We have really enjoyed all the virtual escape rooms we’ve visited over the past few months, and it is really great to be able to visit rooms we might not have been able to otherwise, but some of the best experiences we’ve had lately have been rooms and adventures that were developed solely for the online platform. Plymouth Point is just such an experience, and we were excited to see how this more story focused game would play out!
High Points:
For players looking for something new and exciting, Plymouth Point absolutely fits the bill. An interactive detective story full of puzzling enigmas and devious twists, we had an astoundingly good time attempting to find Ivy and discover why she’d disappeared in the first place. The game integrates some marvelous videos into the experience, all of which are well acted and ensure the immersion remains intact throughout. Small tidbits of the greater mystery are solved as we worked through the clues, and some late game revelations just oozed with a barely restrained foreboding. This immersion isn’t only present within the video, as the mystery escapes into the real world as well, utilizing familiar social networking, previously existing websites as well as ones created for the game itself, and messages between the characters themselves. Truly, Plymouth Point uses the online platform to its fullest, ensuring the line between fact and fiction are completely blurred during the entire experience. The mystery has multiple paths players can take, all culminating in an explosive finale that ties up the enigmas presented, but absolutely begs for a sequel at the same time. Should Swamp Motel decide to expand the world of Plymouth Point, we are here for it, no question.
Plymouth Point’s puzzles are mostly research based, tasking players with uncovering the truth by looking into the darkest corners of Ivy’s life, and tracking down what happened to her in the days leading up to her disappearance. Every interaction makes perfect sense within the world of the game, and does an excellent job of showing, not telling by deeply integrating the storyline into every action. Gameplay is brilliantly intuitive, and the signposting is just subtle enough to come naturally to players without seeming forced or overly obvious, and every revealed secret came with a massively satisfying ah ha moment for our team. The adventure is mostly linear, with one specific goal at any point, but since there is loads to investigate at any given time, each player feels engaged with the game as they share information and piece together solutions together. For only £35.00-40.00 per team, this experience is imminently affordable and a great value for the huge amount of enjoyment we got out of the game. We were still talking about it for a few days after, and I cannot wait to see what Swamp Motel comes up with next!
Low Points:
The beginning of the experience was a bit slow, as there was a fair amount of information to go through, and only vague ideas of where the information could be applied. Just a slightly subtle clue could help move things forward a bit smoother here. Passwords were also not standardized like other games with virtual components, meaning there was a bit of guesswork in figuring out if the password included capital letters or not.
Verdict:
Plymouth Point is an astoundingly immersive experience, combining the best features of virtual escape rooms and interactive theatre in order to deliver an adventure that is truly captivating from start to finish. I recommend checking it out as soon as you can as the mystery behind the disappearances in Plymouth Point is not to be missed! Gather your team of online investigators and uncover the conspiracy here!
9.5/10 (Excellent)
Full Disclosure: Swamp Motel provided our team with a complementary game.
Escape Room Adventurer 