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256 escape rooms
Falderon Forest was a nice execution of some interesting ideas, though not without some weaknesses as well. In particular, I love the idea of games that give players different meaningful roles, since that can lead to memorable hero moments and interesting interactions. This game stands out as the best execution of the different player roles that I've played so far. My understanding is that this game also attempts to be self-run, with a GM only stepping in if things break. This was a little more of a toss-up - being very automated allowed for amusing interactions based on progression, but the system also felt improperly tuned, with some triggers becoming annoying. The one that stands out most to me was an audio cue that was amusing the first time, but then kept triggering over and over. To make matters worse, it wasn't wasn't clear if it was supposed to be cluing us to do something else (it wasn't, it was just for fun). After the game, the GM said they thought it was working as intended, but that just makes me think it wasn't designed well or that corner cases weren't thought out enough. Admittedly, this is a hard task, but that's kind of what I would expect when there's so much automation. We didn't really encounter this, but I heard from other people that the automated hinting can also be hit or miss, as it might not accurately understand what progress you've made. A human GM is still the gold standard. Puzzles felt good and the set was very nice. The storyline was cute, especially the ending. I did think that some of the fairies were overly annoying or distracting - while this is in character for fairies, it's also not really something I enjoy.
Gameplay
Atmosphere
Customer service
Particularly interesting or different
Yes
I always like per-player roles. The GM-less self-running approach was unusual, and had some plusses and minuses.
Story
Difficulty
Medium
Ideal number of players
4
There are 4 unique roles, so ideally you have 4 people. There's mostly enough content for this to be fine.
Scary
Not scary
Was anything broken?
Yes
In the final room, one of the pressure sensors was finicky and required us to sometimes lift it up to get it to stop registering.
Live actors
No
Physically active
Not at all
Easy to find location
Yes