The Village - Horror

Brilliant - THE reason to come to Milan. One of my absolute favorite horror experiences which is also a good escape room in its own right with emphasis on exploration (not a lot of puzzling on the horror side, but the puzzles make sense in the world and move the story forward). I hate "darkness as a puzzle" but here the darkness was a critical component to the immersion in this creative, interwoven set. Completely immersive, engaging and ultimately rewarding when you realize what's up. Scary but not as much as we expected and, importantly, not so much that you can't complete tasks - there are plenty of moments to regroup, strategize and triage. I love physical challenges and this offered more than your average share (but nothing difficult for fit people - we're not talking crossfit level here - some basic climbing, crawling and even jumping). One negative: you will find things that you think are relevant - but only come into play in Adventure mode. We were distracted trying to solve a puzzle at the end of the game, which in fact was only for Adventure mode - and we had to be nudged toward what we were supposed to do. While this is a nice motivation for replay, it does make me wish there were an option - even for double the price - to play both in one. Very glad we chose horror - if you're on the fence or you plan to do both, it's best to do the horror first because much of the fun is exploring a dark, immersive set, and the acting component makes this a truly unique game, beyond just a creepy escape room. The puzzles themselves were decent but a bit simple (though the added puzzles in Adventure might be better). If you play Adventure first, you remove the exploration aspect of it and already know what's around the corner... There are no actors in Adventure and I really think you'd miss out on what, for me, was the highlight of the experience.