Forget what you think you know about online escape rooms
An Online Multiplayer Escape Room Experience
Pilot an experimental robot through 60 minutes of mind boggling challenges designed by the award winning team behind Eltham Escape Rooms and Bewilder Box
Drag, drop, solve and sleuth your way through each interactive puzzle, with every action synced across your team.
Bewilder Box’s physical escape rooms are pretty special so as soon as we saw they created an online experience, joining together with Eltham Escape rooms (who also have good rooms), it was a no-brainer and we knew we had to give it a try.
We actually set up to do this ‘room’ at the same time as a number of other enthusiasts over on the Facebook UK Escape Room Enthusiast Group to make it like a mini competition, because why not add a bit more pressure?!
For obvious reasons we are unable to do physical escape rooms right now, so our usual extended team ‘Better than Halloumi’ came together to tackle this one. We were in three separate locations and connected up via Zoom to enable communication between us.
As 3pm came, we (and the other enthusiasts) hit go on ‘The B.R.U.C.E Project’…
CONCEPT/EXECUTION
We’ve done a few ‘online’ experiences, some you print at home, some are online through google forms, and then there is The B.R.U.C.E Project. The B.R.U.C.E Project took online escape rooms to another level, it felt more like an old-school browser based interactive computer game.
What was different about this experience was that it was developed so that even though our team were in different locations, we all shared the same screen and could independently control our own cursors. It took a bit of getting used to but the fact that we could all physically interact with the puzzles was a great way to make sure everyone felt involved and could contribute.
There were a few little glitches here and there, but this was day one of it being launched and they will likely be ironed out in no time and didn’t really detract from our experience.
PUZZLES
There was a nice mix of puzzles in this game, and a number of them were essentially digital versions of regular puzzles that you would normally find in a physical escape room (ahh, the memories…). A good number of the puzzles were logic based and although there was no searching like you would find in a physical room, you did have to pay attention to make sure you didn’t interpret something in the wrong way.
One or two sections involved sound so make sure you have that turned on! Arguably though, the biggest puzzle involed was learning to communicate with your team and make sure you knew where you were clicking and when.
One thing that often gets overlooked in both physical and digital rooms is the use of colours, or more specifically enabling colour puzzles to be solved by those who have difficulty seeing colours. The team here did a great job to make all the puzzles inclusive, simply by using very different colours and also adding labels in places to say what the colour was.
CLUE SYSTEM
We didn’t actually use the clue system so it is hard to say exactly how good it was, but it was always clear how one would get clues and I have no doubt they would have given just enough of a nudge to get teams back on track. Infact we have seen that other teams have completed this experience having taken some clues, so it must work.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The Bewilder Box/Eltham Escapes team have done a great job in bringing something different to the market. To me at least, it felt like a hark back to old computer games and I loved it. Bewilder Box have managed to sneak their usual style of humour in to the game, and there’s even a system in place to allow you to celebrate (caution: over use may p*ss off your team!).
We are very much looking forward to Sector X: The B.R.U.C.E Project, Part 2!
TOOLS REQUIRED
- Computer with Internet Connection
Final Rating:
| Puzzles | |
| Concept/Execution | |
| Clue System | |
| Value for Money | |
| Enjoyment |
Team: 5 players – working remotely from three locations
Time Taken: 84:53, with no clues (not our best performance)
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