BravePiglet
128 escape rooms
A great escape room where you have to find the treasure of the infamous gangster Dutch Schultz, and my personal favorite from Clue Adventures: it featured many interesting props and puzzles as well as a live actor: the helpful bartender Gus played by our wonderful GM Dylan. First, a word about hints at this business: they try to give you a lot of control over how you get hints by having 3 options at the start of the game: Normal (GM gives hints when they see players fall behind), Ultimate (GM signals players that they are falling behind and they choose whether to accept a hint), Extreme (GM is silent unless asked by players). We played Jet2Space on Ultimate and that gave us the confidence to play 2 Tickets 2 Ride and Gangster's Paradise on Extreme, but that proved a mistake becase we didn't finish it on time. My advice to anyone playing this room: go for Normal or Ultimate mode: it is very difficult to judge your progress due to the presence of a hidden room, and Gus giving the hints means that they are not as immersion breaking as they would be in a regular room. Ana managed to guess a combination lock, and then we also almost guessed the answer to the card puzzle which seemed to exasperate Gus 😂. Alas, we ran out of time just as we entered the last room. There's no worse feeling than thinking you're on time and then discovering a whole new hidden room of puzzles is left. The one thing that all escape rooms could do with is a counter next to the timer showing players' approximate percentage progress so that they have an idea how to budget their hints. I particularly enjoyed the "whodunnit?" puzzle section where you have to single out a suspect and explain the theory to Gus. It's a nice use of a live actor even though he kind of acts as a glorified combination lock. Some props like the radio, the roulette table and the bar, as well as the campy representation of Dutch Schultz do a good job of immersing you in the setting. I'm really glad we stumbled on Clue Adventures during our stay. They seem to be still not super well-known, perhaps because they're far away from the city centre. Even the GM at EscapePlan had not heard about them. The Startford neighborhood itself was also a very pleasant surprise! It's a great place to visit with a lot of cool things to try out: rent a bike and explore the Olympic Park, visit the AcelorMittal Orbit and ride the slide, and go for an ABBA concert at ABBA Arena.
