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256 escape rooms
I want to be positive, so let's start with what I liked: The set did a pretty decent job of evoking a pirate ship - perhaps more spaciously than you might expect, but I'm willing to overlook that as a concession to playability for larger groups. There's a large soft feature in the second space that was super fun, that we hadn't seen in other rooms, and wanted to waste time with. I also liked that the victory condition wasn't the typical "open the exit door", but a more thematic "commandeer the ship and hoist your own flag". Unfortunately, the puzzles were kind of janky. There was one puzzle we needed to ask for a hint twice on - the first time wasn't helpful; even after the second hint and understanding the intended solution, none of us thought it was reasonable. Another puzzle was straight up missing parts; we triple checked our answer before asking the GM, who then skipped us past it. Most of the locks and keys are not associated in any obvious way, so after we got a combo we had to wander around trying everything. There were some leftover signs of things that were probably puzzles in the past but that had been removed, and some parts of the game looked very worn - maintenance does not seem to be a priority. Individually, none of this is terrible -- I've played other games which have some of these traits and still enjoyed them. Together, it's not great. With the caveat that we arrived late due to travel issues, when we arrived the GM seemed unhappy to see us. We later learned that she was running three games simultaneously; if I was in her shoes, I'd probably also be grouchy. She warned us that she wouldn't be watching our progress and that we'd need to proactively ask for hints. I could imagine this game being better when it was new and if the GM had time to pay closer attention.
Gameplay
Janky puzzles
Atmosphere
Customer service
Difficulty
Medium
Game tech
Mechanical
Scary
Not scary
Was anything broken?
Yes
Live actors
No
Physically active
Not at all
Easy to find location
Yes
Parking
Easy