Next Level Escapes: The Ultimate Hockey Battle (Hamilton, ON)

One for fans of Ice Hockey

Welcome to The Ultimate Hockey Battle!

This isn’t about finding a way out of the rink. There’s no escape tunnel waiting for you.
Your win is measured the way hockey has always been measured. Goals.

Every puzzle you solve earns your team a shot on goal. Every full minute left on the clock earns you another shot. This isn’t about escaping. It’s about scoring.

Work as a team, beat the clock, and make your shots count.

This game was a bit of a different one for me, as it was a game I was playing without Liz. Yes, I’ve played a few games without Liz here and there, but never on the other side of the Atlantic. I had popped over to Canada to surprise a friend and the only instruction from Liz was that I wasn’t allowed to play any TERPECA level games without her – so Next Level Escapes seemed like a safe choice.

We’d actually played games (The Graveyard and The Thompsons) at Next Level a couple of years ago and had a good time, and what made it even better was that they’d just opened up a brand new room, The Ultimate Hockey Battle. Even more appropriately was that the day before I had just watched Canada (sadly) lose to The USA in the Men’s Olympic Gold Medal Ice Hockey match – this game couldn’t have been more timely.

Next Level have a couple of venues, but we’ve only ever visited the one on Upper James Street in Hamilton. The venue has plenty of parking, but the oddest thing is that you enter through an actual pharmacy! After ascending the stairs we found ourselves in the sizable waiting room, which contained plenty of board games to help us kill time but it wasn’t long before our host appeared, encouraged us to store personal items in the locker, and then took us up another flight of stairs to the entrance to the game.

The start was all a bit of a blur and we weren’t given our hosts’ name, but we received a brief health and safety briefing outside the entrance to the room, and then we were shown in. Our GM gave us our all important passes and then an introduction video on the TV screen gave us our mission briefing – being totally honest, I’ve no idea what the story was, but that’s nothing new as I am terrible at following the story in most games.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

When we played The Graveyard at Next Level a few years ago I think we were quite impressed with the set design in it, and I had hoped that being the newest game at the venue, The Ultimate Hockey Battle would have been even more impressive. But sadly, it wasn’t. That’s not to say it was bad, I’ve been to the Ice Hockey Hall of Fame and this had the similar sort of layout that one would expect.

The room was not overly exciting in terms of decor but it did what it needed to. There were many things that all related to Ice Hockey and I’m pretty sure that everything in the game was there for a reason and served a purpose.

Throughout the game music was playing which helped to take away from the deathly silence that one can experience in escape rooms. In terms of accessibility, the website also states that “The majority of this room is wheelchair accessible”. I would imagine this is the case as I can only recall one area where there was a step. I would also assume that if this game is accessible, then there must be a lift somewhere in the building to get you up to the reception area, and the floor where this game is located.

The layout of the game didn’t really make sense to me, but that could be because I missed out on the story. But each area we encountered linked clearly to the hockey theme. Perhaps my only gripe was that this game builds up to a big finale, and you have a good idea of what is coming, but when you then get to that point you have to stop and wait for the GM to come in and set up this part of the game. Yes, it’s fun, but in an odd way it felt a bit anti-climactic considering how fun it should have been.

PUZZLES

Probably the first thing I should say about the puzzles is that fortunately no knowledge of Ice Hockey is required, although at times it could certainly help. We played as a team of four, three Canadians, and me, and every-one contributed to the game regardless of the level of hockey knowledge.

The game was multi-linear at times, so we could in theory split up and work on things independently, but as the other players in the team were quite inexperienced, we stuck together for the most part.

After the game we had a little chat with who I assume was the owner and he pointed out how rare it is to have a sports themed game, and it’s true, I think this is possibly the first one I’ve played, and that’s because a lot of the puzzles lend themselves to revolving around statistics – not the most exciting way to create puzzles. So yes, there were a lot of game and player stats, and looking at numbers etc… but outside of that, logic, observation, audio, and teamwork made up the bulk of the puzzles – plus a little ‘skill’ at the end.

The signposting was decent but it did feel like we spent a lot of time thinking ‘now what?’ On entering the room we found there was a lot of information to take in, verging on overwhelming, but once we got going we found that things started to fall in place a little more. I think my least favourite puzzle was the last ‘proper’ puzzle, but I think that’s because as a Brit, I’m not used to a lot of the hockey talk and terminology so it baffled my brain a little. Those who know, and enjoy Ice Hockey will probably breeze this section!

Solving puzzles resulted in a mixture of results; sometimes it was a maglock releasing somewhere in the room, and other times it was a combination for a padlock – but there wasn’t a huge amount of padlocks (if they’re not your thing).

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Our host who greeted us when we arrived was possibly not the person who was our GM, as we received help from a different person, who we also met after our game finished. The first host was pleasant enough, but the other person was clearly always on standby if we needed any assistance to get us back on track.

For the most part, the help that we needed was just to give us some additional signposting, or perhaps when they could tell we had pretty much completed a puzzle but just needed that final push to finish it fully.

There was a TV screen in the room but this was just used for the initial introduction and then for a countdown timer. Clues were delivered via a walkie-talkie.

ANYTHING ELSE

This was a fun game, but I think I wanted more from it. The finale that it built up to just felt a bit anticlimactic and slowed the pace massively, but I’m not sure how that could be ‘fixed’. Ice Hockey fans will probably get a good kick from this game, but for me, of the games I’ve played at this venue, it’s probably position three of three – but that could also because I didn’t play it with Liz (she’s the brains)

Success / Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 4 players – game over in around 57 mins

Address: 1039 Upper James St Level #2, Hamilton, ON L9C 3A6, Canada

Website: https://nextlevelescaperooms.ca/