I heard that Dark Altar was recently upgraded, so I quickly joined my friends’ team to give it a try. Let me start with the conclusion: for a basic escape room, having six experienced people is too many given the difficulty level and space—we finished 16 minutes early.
The plot revolves around thwarting an evil ritual. As I have played 8 rooms at Omventure, the puzzles look familiar to me: find patterns, enter passwords; solve logic puzzles forward and backward, each room contains about 2-3 puzzles.
There isn’t much reading involved, not much audio, no videos. There were a few moments where it seemed like a big reveal was coming, but it never did. The game ended with a noise that sounded like a vacuum cleaner, and everyone walked out saying: "That's it?"
As for the comparison between the new and old versions, I haven’t played the old version, but according to a recap by our gamemaster, the final room’s setting was upgraded, and a puzzle was added that linked several previous rooms together. The promotional photos on Instagram really caught my eye—they cleverly captured the most exciting parts of the room and gave the illusion that the space was much bigger.