The Keeper And The Fungus Among UsHeadlock Escape Rooms OnlineEscape roomVirtual Simply delightful. An escape room inside of an immersive story that was built specifically to be played via Zoom. Not terribly difficult but the puzzles are clever and the way everything takes place inside the game world is fantastic. Includes some laugh-out-loud moments. Highest recommendation.
Rise of the FungiHeadlock Escape Rooms OnlineEscape roomVirtual This “prequel” might best be enjoyed after playing “The Keeper and the Fungus Among Us” as it contains a number of easter eggs and nods to the other game, but I don’t think it really matters what order you play them in. This game is just as much fun and just as whimsical. Highest recommendation.
Sherlock Holmes - Phantom's HourWolf Escape Games-OnlineEscape roomVirtual I’m not sure how I feel about the Wolf Escape online games. I have played all three of them. If I compare them to an in-person escape room they are a great deal (20 bucks for 60 to 90 minutes). If I compare them to a computer adventure game they are a terrible deal (a $60 game will have many more puzzles and take a lot longer to finish). But I do enjoy the Wolf Escape games and will keep playing them as they come out, so that’s a thumbs up for Morty purposes. I would put Phantom’s Hour in between the two previous offerings. We liked it more than Hallows Hill and less than Miami Bay. The graphics are excellent. I still think their “backpack” system for letting everyone look at props on an individual device is brilliant. The voice acting is fine (nothing special, but nothing bad). The puzzles are pretty good overall if a bit on the easy side, but with some good variety. There are maybe a dozen puzzles total. The hint system is the same as in the other games; you can get anything from a nudge to a spoiler and it just adds to your time taken. I thought the story was reasonably interesting and it did feel like the sort of case that Sherlock Holmes would take on. Overall, we enjoyed it.
Hallows HillWolf Escape Games-OnlineEscape roomVirtual The app worked very well (we used Firefox). The “virtual backpack” allowing all players to examine objects on their individual devices is very nice. Solid tutorial and we had no technical difficulties. The game has very good production values: excellent graphics and atmospheric audio. The story was interesting if a bit predictable. Limited interactivity within the scenes, and the puzzles aren’t that great, but we had fun. Recommended.
Miami BayWolf Escape Games-OnlineEscape roomVirtual Note: we played the “extended edition” of the game; there was also a shorter version, but I don’t know how it differs — whether there are fewer scenes, fewer puzzles, or easier puzzles. Overall I feel about the same about this game as I did about Wolf Escape’s previous offering “Hallows Hill,” which is that the software, graphics, and voice acting are excellent while the puzzles are mostly not very good. I will say that “Miami Bay” offers a much longer play time than its predecessor, at about 2.5-3 hours vs. 60-90 minutes. The setup is a “Europeans try to satirize / pay homage to U.S. pop culture of the 1980s as seen through the lens of Miami Vice” kind of thing. That isn’t a complaint: I got what they were going for, it definitely isn’t trying to take itself seriously, and it was amusing. (That said, a couple of tips: that is *not* how criss-cross puzzle clues are numbered, the way our larger-denomination bills look has changed since the 1980s so using modern currency feels anachronistic in the same way that using images of Euros for a game set in the 1980s in Europe would be, and Americans generally don’t use a 24-hour clock or write our dates as dd/mm/yyyy.) Overall the story is serviceable, even downright funny at times; it’s just let down by the puzzles, which as I said are mostly not very good, but I do give the designers credit for ambition and variety. The hint system does what you need it to do, so don’t be shy about taking hints as there are several “guess what I’m thinking” puzzles. We didn’t encounter any bugs and it was a fun evening so I still give the game a thumbs up, but if “meh” was an option I’d give it a solid meh. With better puzzle design the Wolf Escape Games folks could have a real winner on their hands, as the production values are great and the software seems very solid.
