Escape from the Witch's House in the Woods

While recommended by some as the ‘nine-room’ game of choice at Tokyo Mystery Circus over ‘Runaway Train’, ‘Escape from the Witch’s House in the Woods’ felt unnecessarily obtuse as a team of two. The narrative and world-building were a step above their ‘nine-room’ train escape, with several twists and turns throughout. The set pieces and the central mechanic of using wands to cast magic were interesting integrations into the experience, albeit slightly under-utilised and fleeting in practice. Where our previous SCRAP experience, ‘Runaway Train’, offered a hint book that could be accessed at any time, ‘Witch’s House’ allocated hints roughly every two minutes or so. Sometimes, these hints weren’t particularly helpful. While you could access a hint immediately, doing so came at the cost of forfeiting your remaining time for that interval. For instance, if one minute remained before the next clue was due, sacrificing that minute to receive the clue immediately became a frustrating trade-off. Naturally, as a player, you are inclined to wait, hoping to solve the puzzle yourself and save valuable seconds. This mechanic almost inevitably leads to frustration and desperation. Some puzzles were frustrating, difficult to interact with, and not properly reset due to the ‘nine-room’ design (with other teams ahead of you in the adjacent room and behind you in the preceding room). Several puzzles required players to reset props for the next team, yet we encountered multiple puzzles with misplaced or already-triggered props, leading to confusion and diminishing the experience. Additionally, with teams playing simultaneously in adjacent rooms and other escape rooms operating on the same floor, the space was noisy. This significantly hindered the solving of sound-based puzzles, which would have benefitted greatly from improved environmental design. If you finish a room quickly, you cannot advance to the next one until the team ahead of you has also moved on. While your timer pauses during this wait, it means the 50-minute experience can stretch to 70 minutes due to delays caused by other teams progressing—or abandoning their attempts—at a slower pace. As with their other ‘nine-room’ experience, the final room’s culminating meta-puzzle and other challenges in ‘Witch’s House’ felt deliberately designed to encourage players to purchase an additional retry ticket for ¥1000 per person. This ticket grants an extra 10 minutes to re-enter the final room, this time armed with a sheet of hints, as hints are not provided during the initial attempt. While the puzzles weren’t to our taste, some people do prefer this game over ‘Runaway Train’. We would recommend their 10-minute prison break room—it was fun.

A lot of tasks in short time so quite stressfull. Still it was fun and worth it.

Can be done in English, enjoyed the time pressure of lots of small rooms, unfortunately did not complete the last puzzle in final room. Definitely worth doing, good use of tech, puzzle variety and immersion.