Tag: Virtual Escape

The Escape Game – Rugrats: The Search for the Losted Toys (Review)

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Location: Your Home via the Magic of the Internet!

Players:  Up to 8 (We recommend 4-5)

Price: $35 per person

Time to Escape: 60 minutes

Theme:

From the The Escape Game website:

Angelica has tricked the babies and hidden all of their bestest toys. But, oh, no! She unwittingly misplaced her beloved Cynthia doll, too! Join Tommy and the gang to track down their most favoritest toys and save playtime! Oh, and you better hurry because it’s a race against the snore. If Grandpa Lou wakes up from his nap and catches you outside the playpen, you’ll be scooped up and toyless – maybe forever!

High Points:

The instant we began our Search for the Losted Toys, I noticed how brilliantly the set evoked the feel of the old Nickelodeon show. As a big fan of Rugrats when I was little, this room absolutely brought back memories, and I love the art style that The Escape Game has employed to bring the world of Rugrats to life! Starting us off in the babies playpen was a great touch, and the way we escaped from there kicked off things in a fantastic way! As we progressed, puzzles gradually increased in difficulty, presenting a difficulty curve that started with some easy wins to get our momentum up, and becoming more complex as we neared the final few toys. I loved how some of the late stage puzzles were brilliantly layered, and the final room really did have some of the best overall interactions in the game. The game isn’t quite as difficult as others we’ve played from The Escape Game, but it does present a great challenge while still being a suitable game for families, and a great intro to escaping for older kids! The escape itself was pretty linear overall, which was good for the remote nature of our experience, ensuring that we weren’t jumping between too many points and letting clues get lost in the fray. The puzzles and interactions were varied nicely, allowing for several different types of puzzler to shine, and keeping the proceedings from getting bogged down in any one type of puzzle. One of my favorite interactions, though it would have been cooler if we had been able to do it live, allowed us to contact one of the best side characters from the show, and it was such a rush of nostalgia to hear his dulcet tones! On the whole, our team has a brilliant time solving through the Pickle’s home, and ensuring that the Rugrats, (even Angelica!) were reunited with their beloved toys.

Low Points:

Though we really enjoyed our time with this super creative Rugrats room, I highly, highly recommend doing it in person if you can. The remote experience is translated decently, but a lot of the puzzles included within the room are very tactile and do not translate well. One of these puzzles in particular takes forever and is very tedious to run through. However, we recognize that were we physically in the room, these interactions would have been a lot more fun. Overall, our avatar did a great job, but was required to do so much of the room for us that we felt like we had missed out on particular parts of the game. Other than that, there is one interaction in particular that requires light outside knowledge as well, and the main parts of the puzzle are somewhat banal.

Verdict:

On the whole, Rugrats: The Search for the Losted Toys is a great way to spend an hour, with the caveat that if you are able to play this one live (Available in Las Vegas and King of Prussia,) that will be a better experience overall. However, we still had a great time with the remote experience, reliving the nostalgia of Rugrats, and enjoying the brilliant set while recapturing those losted toys from Angelica! Book your time helping the Rugrats here!

7.5/10 (Good)

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

District 3 Escape Rooms – Something Brewing (Review)

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Location: Your Home via the Magic of the Internet!

Players: 2-8 (We recommend 3-5 players)

Price: $22 CAD per person (About $18.07 USD at the time of writing)

Time to Escape: 60 minutes

A perfect place for coffee and dastardly plots!

Theme:

From the District 3 Escape Rooms website:

You and your friends head to a coffeehouse before the celebration. You soon find out that something is brewing, and your evening takes a turn for the worse. What crucial decisions will your team need to make, and what major outcome will that lead to?

High Points:

Something Brewing is a fast paced, puzzle packed experience, and we had an absolutely brilliant time playing through it! Not to spoil anything, but the room is replayable, with different endings depending on a particular choice that takes place about midway through the room. This choice impacts the room greatly, not only changing the ending of the room, but determining what puzzling path you’ll travel down! We have only seen a mechanic like this maybe one or two other times during our almost 400 room career, and it is implemented beautifully here! The paths for both sides are extremely well done, and signposted in a way that prevents locks or clues from the other path from getting in the way. I absolutely recommend doing both paths, as the direction that I generally wouldn’t pick first contains some of my favorite puzzles! I really loved how things were updated to keep play fresh during our subsequent play through, and we felt we got a full experience both times. The shift in the room once you discover the true purpose of this coffee shop is fantastic, and I loved how wacky the story line got. Several of the puzzles would have required us to be in room or to direct our avatar through a tedious amount of placing, but luckily, District 3 has done an amazing job of porting these puzzles over to Telescape, allowing us to work on them at our own pace, and reducing any confusion that may be resulted from trying to get our avatar to complete some of the more complicated tasks. The puzzles overall are very intuitive, and eagle eyed players will be rewarded with some fantastic ah ha moments, as there are many clues hidden in plain sight that only become obvious once a key piece of the puzzle is found. Overall, I thought this room was brilliant, with many wonderfully hidden surprises and sinister plots!

Low Points:

We played through a particular puzzle a couple times on separate weeks due to Something Brewing’s two-path nature. This particular one was really tedious and directionless the first go round, but made much more sense the second time, partially because we were familiar with it, but also because our GM included a bit that wasn’t present the first time we played, so this one hinges greatly on if your avatar remembers to use this particular opening. This room translates fine to remote play, but I feel like it’d be so much better in person! The remote version just leaves a little something missing due to how incredibly interactive and tactile portions of it is.

Verdict:

District 3 has some fantastic games, but Something Brewing really takes the cake for replayability and originality! The extra puzzles, choose your own adventure style story, and convincing set really make this one a must do! I highly recommend this one remote or in person! Book your time in the coffee shop here!

9/10 (Excellent)

Full Disclosure: District 3 Escape Rooms provided our team with a complementary game.

District 3 Escape Rooms – Interrogation Room (Review)

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Location: Your Home via the Magic of the Internet!

Players: 2-8 (We recommend 3-5 players)

Price: $22 CAD per person (About $18.07 USD at the time of writing)

Time to Escape: 60 minutes

What do you know?!?!?

Theme:

From the District 3 Escape Rooms website:

An investigation begins the day after an attempted heist at a museum. Despite being brought in for questioning as suspects, unease led to your attempted escape. Staying too long may lead to your arrest, or perhaps worse!

First Impressions:

We were excited to be invited back to District 3 as we had really enjoyed their Haunted and Cabin rooms, so when they asked if we were interested in returning, we instantly responded in the affirmative! The Interrogation Room seemed a basic theme, but we were sure that District 3 had something interesting up their sleeves, and we absolutely weren’t disappointed with the experience.

High Points:

Interrogation Room’s set is well produced, and the sterile seeming nature of the first room is brilliantly immersive and hides many of the surprises well. As we went deeper into the room, we were delighted to find out how so much of the room was well hidden in plain sight. The story also evolves well, starting off with a standard, “you’ve been held here even though you are innocent,” theme and blossoming into areas we definitely were not expecting! The whole experience utilizes Telescape well, and presents some of the puzzle items as well as our inventory in an intuitive way that ensures we always knew what was available to us. There were also a few awesome interactive elements that made us feel like we were affecting the room from our computers. Our avatar was also brilliant, making sure to react to things in the room and keep things light hearted as we moved along the puzzling branches. Our avatar also felt more like our teammate eschewing the, “well intentioned but unbelievably stupid person in the room,” style avatar that seems to be very popular with many other experiences. We had to engage with our avatar in order to solve multi part puzzles and other such interactions, which was great, and was definitely something I haven’t seen much of. The puzzles themselves were very intuitive, and fit nicely together once all the clues were available to us. There was even a bonus puzzle for us to solve, which if we could complete within the time limit, would provide us with bonus points for District 3’s leaderboards! The game wraps up everything well within the story, but leaves open the possibility of a sequel, which we are excited to play once it arrives! The distinct, ongoing stories of District 3 are fantastic, and we really love how they have been implemented; there’s very few folks who story lines like this, and District 3 does it very well.

Low Points:

.One of the puzzles didn’t work quite as smoothly online as we’d prefer, though we definitely think this puzzle would work a lot better live. It was a really cool idea, but just didn’t translate to the virtual experience quite as well as we’d like. There is one particular puzzle that can cause some confusion if an item is moved, and while we eventually solved it, it definitely was something that was easy to overlook virtually.

Verdict:

As always, District 3 has done an excellent job creating an interesting theme, engaging story, and immersive puzzling! We really enjoyed our time in the Interrogation room, and it was able to keep our group of 5 experienced escapists engaged for almost the entire hour. We highly recommend checking this one out, especially if you’ve enjoyed their previous online offerings. Get locked in the Interrogation Room here!

8/10 (Great)

Full Disclosure: District 3 Escape Rooms provided our team with a complementary game.

Daydream Adventures – A Witchy Christmas

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Kara’s Note: This review was brought to you by me! 😀

Location: Your Home via the Magic of the Internet!

Players: 1-8 (We recommend 4-5 players)

Price: Starting at $110 CAD for up to 4 players

Time to Escape: 90 minutes

Theme:

From the Daydream Adventures’ website:

Hilda, a mischievous witch, lives in a wondrous forest. There was a time when she had tricks and traps for humans sneaking into her home. After nearly a year of humans hiding away, Hilda has become very bored and lonesome, so she casted her magic to travel through a portal to find the humans.

The lights and snow, the joy and delight…it was all so frightful and magical. Although she is yet to understand, this witch has discovered Christmas. Hilda wants it all to herself. Back in the safety of her forest, Hilda seeks help from the forest creatures and spirits. Spirits of the forest, such as yourself, are very wise. Will you help this witch unravel the curiosities of Christmas?

First Impressions

Sequel to The Witch’s Forest? Heck yes, sign me up! I was glad to find that our team had the same Hilda from before (is there only one game master for Hilda?) leading us again on this adventure. I always love this twist on the holidays, and was excited to see how Hilda would make it her own. Back to Dreamlands!

Yay Points

Once again, Hilda set such a fun and great tone from the beginning. She took the time to greet each one of us individually before the game took off, and her banter was always on point. Her personality shined through, providing a unique experience. Her charisma and ability for improv is one of my favorite aspects, as she can really tailor the experience for each group. In addition, Hilda was able to make the logistics of our virtual experience easier. She started the game with a tour around the house, providing a smooth way to include puzzle introductions and places of interest. And there were small actions she took to help nudge us without overdoing it, such as stepping back to adjust the camera view when we needed to focus on a wider picture or the subtle suggestions she provided while describing something.

As a sequel, A Witchy Christmas made excellent use of the previous set. Naturally, this provided various easter eggs, but I was also impressed by how they were able to recycle some props and use them in a completely new way for the current game. (Also, hope this isn’t a spoiler, but I was super excited for the gnomes again!). The new puzzle and story elements that Daydream Adventures devised were very in-theme as Hilda learned about Christmas, and included some interesting surprises along the way. There was a particular animation aspect I especially enjoyed, and I found Hilda’s name for this character hilarious and adorable. The puzzles were interesting, and provided a lot of opportunities for interaction and audience choice/participation.

With The Witch’s Forest, I was impressed with the specific webpages associated with each puzzle or event that occurred. These pages had included relevant information about scenarios, as well as videos depicting what occurs when we solved puzzles, interactions with other in-game characters, and the magic Hilda was seeing around her. Not only were videos included for A Witchy Christmas, but also they were integrated directly into our Zoom experience without us even having to click on a different Zoom video to see it. Actually, our overall need to click on things was decreased as we didn’t have to enter passwords, and instead were able to focus on the visuals presented through Hilda’s camera. However, Daydream Adventures did thoughtfully sent us pictures of different puzzle stimuli so we could take a closer look without the camera having to zoom in or move back and forth.

Pondering Points

One puzzle in particular was a little confusing for me, though the other players in my team seemed to understand it just fine. Related to this though, there was a clue that I felt like could’ve been emphasized a little more, or at least lingered on a little longer as it wasn’t initially obvious to us that it was supposed to clue us into something.

There was one or two more puzzles where I feel like we could’ve benefited from pictures of the clues. We discussed this with the game masters after the game though, so this might be changed now!

Final Verdict

If you’re looking for an entertaining Christmas-themed virtual escape room, then you should definitely check out A Witchy Christmas! Don’t take my word for it though, you can see for yourself and book them here!

8/10 (Great)

Full Disclosure: Daydream Adventures provided our team with a complementary game.

Mystery Mansion Regina – D’Vile’s Curio Shoppe (Review)

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Location: Your Home via the Magic of the Internet!

Players: 3-10 (We recommend 4-5 players)

Price: $25 CAD per person (About $19.73 USD at the time of writing)

Time to Escape: 75 minutes

It ain’t Cruella’s shop, that’s for sure.

Theme:

From the Mystery Mansion Regina website:

Local paranormal Youtuber, Estelle Jacobs, was searching for her missing boyfriend, Alex. Shortly after visiting D’Vile’s Curio Shoppe, Estelle vanished without a trace. It’s time to venture inside the Curio Shoppe through a live video feed and find out the truth about Estelle’s disappearance…

We recommend playing Night Terrors before playing this room for story continuity.

First Impressions:

Mystery Mansion Regina is one of the escape room companies out there who we recognize as doing an amazing job adapting to virtual play. They’ve created rooms that are specifically built from the ground up to be online experiences, and because of this, their games shine as few others can. It is always a massive treat to explore one of their rooms, and we were very pleased to be returning for D’Vile’s Curio Shoppe!

High Points:

As I mentioned, this room is tailor made for online groups. While the room can be played live, the online version has been adjusted for online play, and ties into their amazing Night Terrors room beautifully. It was brilliant to return to the world of The Sleepy Man, and with this room ending on an exciting cliff hanger, I can’t wait to see what comes next! Per usual, the acting from our avatar and special guests was fun and immersive, and they tailored their performance to our shenanigans. I always appreciate versatile GMs, especially those that don’t mind playing along with us, and Mystery Mansion Regina’s GMing is top-notch. The room itself was wonderfully spooky, using lighting and sound excellently in order to create a dynamic, creepy atmosphere for us to puzzle in from the safety of our own homes. The entire space feels lived in, and there was so much more than what meets the eye hidden in the dark crevices of the Curio Shoppe. The props involved were devilishly fun, and just soaking in the ambiance and investigating all the weird and wonderful items in the Shoppe was hugely entertaining. All this comes together with a seamless integration into Telescape to translate the game into one of the best remote experiences we’ve played!

Puzzles are fantastic, and have been tweaked from the original room to fit the modified theme, ensuring nothing feels out of place. Some of my favorite enigmas within play with the remote nature of the game fantastically, and I really enjoy seeing how creative the room can get. Mystery Mansion Regina really does an amazing job crafting interactions that work beautifully within the virtual space, and provide an experience that not only feels like an authentic escape room adventure, but is also a one of a kind mystery you won’t find elsewhere! The game is densely packed with puzzling, and there is more than enough included to keep an experienced team busy, ensuring players will receive a good value for the cost. Intuitive and smoothly flowing, D’Vile’s Curio Shoppe absolutely ups the ante for Mystery Mansion Regina’s virtual experiences, and ranks up there with some of our favorite rooms of all time!

Low Points:

Only one puzzle didn’t work flawlessly, and though we felt it was a little unwieldly, we like the idea overall. It definitely tries to play with the game’s tools in a way that is married well to the theme, but it just doesn’t quite work perfectly. A slight adjustment, though, and this is a flawless room!

Verdict:

D’Vile Curio Shoppe is one of those games that I couldn’t wait to play, was 100% enthralled with during, and would recommend to anyone! As always, Mystery Mansion Regina has done a beautiful job creating a one of a kind experience that combines excellent storytelling, creative puzzling, and masterful GMing. You should absolutely check this, and their other brilliant rooms out here!

9.5/10 (Excellent)

Full Disclosure: Mystery Mansion Regina provided our team with a complementary game.