“A missed opportunity”
Reception at the location was a bit underwhelming, we were left to wait in the middle of a crowded waiting room without much of instructions on the modality of our next steps. After that slight awkward moment, we were attended for and after a concise introduction were ushered in the Bunker. Looking around the room, I love the set dressing, the props are real and the room does look like a official bunker office from the cold war. There is a bit of an off-beat, not too serious spy atmosphere (the Fox leaving a "spy note" behind , the fox inserted in old war picture on the wall) but as often, the storyline is rapidly forgotten to let the spotlight to our favorite device: the coded padlock! The room is full of them. It is really a pity that the realism of the prop dressing doesn’t carry over to puzzle, with plastic clue sheets hidden everywhere in the room. A lot of one-off - no lead-in - What in the Hell moment down to sometime quite ridicule extent. Let’s put it that way, in more than one instance, I felt more like a high-schooler than a spy. Crypto puzzles make send for spy games, school math problems don’t. We couldn’t finish the room, I don’t even think we came close. The staff showed little compassion, and no debrief - I like when the staff goes over with us the last puzzle so we can see the end of the room when we fail - and we were back on the street after a quick picture. Overall, the bunker feels like a room with so much potential that gets muddled by underwhelming, frustrating puzzles. Rating: 3/5 “Such a good looking set..." 60 out staff, friendly and competent looking, started us out on one of those sleek escape room for dummies videos. I understand the need of those as escape rooms are quite a new concept and there are still a lot of new players out there. But since we mentioned it was not our first, they could have spared us. I always find those videos distracting from the experience. But in any case, after that underwhelming introduction, we headed to the room. The intro briefing was clear and polished but again missed a ‘je-ne-sais-quoi’ of enthusiasm and passion. The quality of the room is impressive; it does feel we are inside a ship. The props, walls, doors, everything has the heaviness and texture of the real thing. I am getting excited again. I don’t really feel the ship is sinking though (not a lot of ambience in the room). In the first room, the game attempts at a storyline - not forced, but through text and context which sounds interesting - those are the one I like the best; and i’m ready to get more of it. Unfortunately it is completely forgotten halfway and the game become a bit lazy from half way on with gamy-puzzly bits and bobs. Overall the puzzle were on the easy side, with a few “What in the hell” moments but up to a reasonable level; most of puzzle do make sense in their context; it just that the context runs a bit thin toward the end. Hints were given freely in a very straightforward, atmosphere breaking way; at the end, the staff usher us out after a quick picture the usual way. We did finish the room (quite early at that) but we didn’t get a great sense of achievement out of it. Obviously lot’s of time and care has been spent on that room. It shows in the overall quality of the props and the set dressing is quite impressing and worth a look. It is too bad that the same care has not extended to the design of the puzzles and the atmospheric of the room. My Rating: 3/5 "It is just a room, 4m by 4m, we are 6 in there and we have 30min. to get out... not much clue to go on, we will be able to out-mind the Room? [28 minutes later...] We reach the last puzzle, the countdown has started... we all are frantically fidgeting the clues we gathered, the panic is rising, ideas are shot left and right.... nothing seems to work... Final signal... We lost, defeated by the Red Room... So close..." The Red Room is said to be one of the best escape room in Tokyo, and without spoiler I can say that it probably is. It is short though and I wish SCRAP would avoid the cheap commercial trick of proposing a time extension against an extra charge at the end of the allocated time... They big enough to be above such practice.
In any case I warmly recommend it! My Rating: 4/5 |
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