AROOM: Sky Heist (Budapest)

A Beautiful Set

You managed to get on board the airship carrying the illustrious guests. Take advantage of the weather and get the priceless treasure! But how will you get off the flying vehicle? Test yourself in AROOM’s latest adventure game!

When we booked games for our trip to Budapest we looked around at a few other review sites but a good amount of the games we played we just took a punt on. AROOM was very much one of those punts, we knew they had a decent reputation but we guessed which games to play, especially as some of them had no reviews at all.

Sky Heist was one of the newest games at AROOM and we knew nothing about it. Making an educated guess, I assumed it was about a heist that took place in the sky… What I wasn’t expecting was that it would take place on a blimp! I think that was a first for us in our escape room career.

AROOM was an interesting venue. They had a lovely waiting area with lockers, toilets, video games, free water, and drinks that could be purchased. It was a nice place to hang out while we waited for our games. The games themselves were located in what felt like a housing block; very strange.

Our gamesmaster, whose name eludes me, was friendly and polite (and spoke very good English) and showed us to the room through the courtyard. When we got in the room things were very cosy with the four of us plus the gamesmaster. Fortunately, she swiftly wished us luck and then left us to it. A briefing played on a video in the room, then we were on our way.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

First impressions of Sky Heist were actually good. The set design of the first space was very good, although admittedly rather small. Fortunately as the game progressed, we found ourselves with more space to move around but the level of game design never lessened.

Each space we encountered felt logical to the story and the blimp we were supposed to be on. There were ambient noises being played at all times (mostly generic storm sounds), and when appropriate there was also some music.

This game doesn’t all take place on one floor so to get the most out of the experience you will need to be comfortable going up a spiral staircase and also undertaking a little crawling.

PUZZLES

We didn’t get off to the best start in Sky Heist. The first puzzle was a bit ambiguous as it could be solved two different ways, and if you did it the wrong way (like we did) then it gave the wrong solution. It was easy enough to fix, but it planted a doubt in our mind about the quality of the puzzles we were going to be encountering.

I’m pleased to say that the first puzzle was an outlier in a game of otherwise decent (non-ambiguous) puzzles. We did manage to overcomplicate a couple of the puzzles but once we took a step back and simplified, the solutions generally presented themselves.

We enjoyed the puzzles in Sky Heist and found them quite varied; teamwork, communication, decoding, logic, observation, and spatial relations all played a part.

The puzzles often resulted in codes for locks or released keys. There was a good mix of both padlocks and tech, and even how you enter the codes at one point in the game was a little different.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Once again, we didn’t get the name of our gamesmaster. But she was very friendly and even though we didn’t need much/any assistance she was obviously paying attention as at the end of the game she was there to greet us and was able to provide feedback on our performance.

We didn’t need any clues in Sky Heist (or any of the games we played at AROOM). If we did need any, they would have come over the TV screen in the room although you were limited to five clues and I don’t know what would happen if you needed more. There was also a timer in the room so we knew how long we had left on this rather impressive blimp.

ANYTHING ELSE

We didn’t know much about AROOM, but they are a solid venue and all the games we played there were decent. Sky Heist was a nice take on a very done theme, and it had major steam-punk vibes about it. The puzzles were decent, and the ending brought everything full circle. Is it a must play for Budapest? I don’t know. But if you do play I don’t think you’ll regret it.

Success/Failed

Final Rating:

Team: 4 players – 24:39 taken

Address: Budapest, Király u. 14, 1061 Hungary

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