AROOM: Ghost Castle (Budapest)

Family Friendly Fun

Your adventure begins in the dark forest, and then you will see the ancient castle, whose halls keep many secrets. No living person has been inside for a long time and maybe there is someone who will not be happy with your visit…

When we started the day we only had three games booked at AROOM; Deadland, Sky Heist and House of Escobar. By the end of the day we had added another game at this venue, Ghost Castle.

The one thing that stood out with all the games we played at AROOM was the quality of the set design, so we felt quite confident taking a punt on another game. It was more of a punt as there didn’t seem to be any reviews for Ghost Castle.

The game wasn’t quite ready for us so we went for a little stroll around the area before returning to the comfortable waiting area. After helping ourselves to the free water and playing a few more retro video games, we stashed our stuff in the lockers and were escorted by our GM, Lucinda, through the outdoor courtyard to the entrance to Ghost Castle.

Again, the main entrance was a non-descript door that looked like we were stepping into an apartment. But once we crossed that threshold we were very much transported into a beautifully decorated set with (initially at least) plenty of room to move around.

As with the other games at AROOM, the generic ‘escape room’ health and safety videos played in the main waiting area, and then when we were safely in the room, a video played to give us our mission briefing. This was both voiced over and also with text.

Being a child of the 80s I remember playing and loving the board game ‘Ghost Castle’. According to AROOM, this game was created as a nostalgic nod to that oh so loved board game – yay!

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

We were a team of four for Ghost Castle and despite there being one or two tight spaces, we never had any issues where we found ourselves tripping over each other.

Each of the spaces we encountered were just as well decorated as the previous, and it’s also worth noting that despite this being called ‘Ghost Castle’. It is very family friendly and would be more akin to the scare levels of a Scooby Doo episode.

At all times there was some background music/noises being played to help us forget about the outside world and as with all of the games at AROOM, a video played when we completed our mission to bring the story to a close.

This game has some really good set design and many fun spaces to explore. I imagine if you play this game with kids that they’ll get a kick out of running all around the place. There are a number of steep stairs and a little crawling required in this game, so you will need to be quite agile to get the full experience out of this game.

PUZZLES

This game was one of the easier games at AROOM as it seemed to be designed for families. It also played out in a somewhat linear manner where one puzzle led on to the next. Saying that, there were moments of nonlinearity which allowed us to split up and work independently.

The puzzles all fitted the creepy ghost castle theme and were created using things one would perhaps expect to find in a ghost castle. A good variety of puzzles kept us on our toes and generally revolved around; searching, observation and logic and a lot of the puzzles were quite tactile.

If I had to find a fault with this game it would be that there were one or two puzzles which were no longer part of the game, yet still remained. This meant we spent time focussing on something that was no longer part of the game and made it feel like we’d bypassed things.

A lot of the puzzles triggered some form of tech which certainly added to the mysterious and haunting feel of the castle. I believe there may have been some padlocks for good measure, although I honestly can’t recall (so there can’t have been too many if there were).

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

We actually didn’t need any clues for any of the games we played at AROOM, so we didn’t really get to test how the clue system would work. What we do know if that they were limited to five clues and could be requested by pressing a button. Clues would then appear in picture form on a screen in the room.

To save you wondering if the GM was providing a clue, it also gave you a live update on its status; requested, received, or processing. I would imagine the language barrier could slow things down, so this status message would probably prove quite useful.

When not in use for clues, the screen also displayed the countdown timer.

I’m not actually sure what would happen if you needed more than the five clues. I assume they’d still help, but that’s its own mystery.

ANYTHING ELSE

Ghost Castle was one of the easier games we played at AROOM, but still had a good quality set and was enjoyable to play.

Somehow we managed to set records in all four of the games we played at AROOM. That doesn’t necessarily mean they were easy, but the puzzles were logical and the games clicked for us.

Success/Failed

Final Rating:

Team: 4 players – 21:24 taken

Address: Budapest, Király u. 14, 1061 Hungary

Website: https://www.locked.hu/en/