The most fun you’ll ever have in a caravan, probably!</mark
He angered the powerful fortune teller Tobar. Since that day his life has changed for the worse. Much worse! He wants to sneak into his trailer when it’s empty to fix things but can’t do it alone. He needs your help!
We’ve seen escape rooms in vans, we’ve seen them in shopping malls, and we’ve seen them in, well, rooms. What we’d never seen until this room was an escape room in a caravan, let alone a caravan in Italy. I’d heard good things about this room before we did it, yet I was still curious about how good it would actually be, I mean, it’s in a caravan!
Our adventure with this room actually started well before our time slot. We received two mysterious emails from Mr X. The first email contained the details we’d need for joining our call, and also an ‘encrypted’ video that explained our mission and the story behind it. The second email, received a few hours before our slot contained some very useful intel that our man on the ground had managed to obtain, pictures from inside the caravan.
Having received this earlier intel we could see that this was no ordinary caravan, this was something special. So, at our allotted time, we assembled our team (James and Charlie from Deadlocked, and Amy from Brit of an Escape Habit) and we were ready to help Mr X find this magical artifact that he so desperately coveted.
CONCEPT/EXECUTION
As previously mentioned, our experience started before the game with the emails, but even when we joined the call everything kept the immersion going. Our GM, Mister X joined us on the Zoom call (well we could see from his POV) and suddenly he had a phone call from his informant, Mike, telling him that the fortune teller had left his caravan so we had one hour to get in, find the artifact, and get out.
I really wasn’t expecting much from this room, but it went well beyond anything I could have imagined. There’s only so much you can really take away from a Zoom call, but we felt like we were a real part of the story and I could even imagine what the caravan would have smelled like.
Mister X did a very good job as ours eyes and (very steady) hands on the ground and at no point did we feel like he was overtly pushing us in any direction. When we play a room we like to create a discard pile for what we have already solved, so it was nice to see Mister X doing the same thing as we went along as this made it easier to know what we still had left to do. Even at one point when we asked him what we hadn’t done he was able to point out items we had found but had yet to do anything with.
There seems to be one thing that some people consider a must have, and others don’t care about; an inventory. This room didn’t have an inventory, but we didn’t feel like it actually needed one and it wouldn’t have fitted with the story. The earlier photos we had received were enough to know what was in the room, and the reason we had those photos fitted perfectly with the story and theme. I think an inventory would have actually distracted us more and taken something away from the experience.
PUZZLES
There was a good mixture of puzzles in the room, the usual you’d find in a physical escape room; searching, logic and deciphering. If anything, one of the hardest things to do was to discount what was simply set dressing and what was needed. I would go so far as to say there were red herrings, but this room was obviously a physical room prior to being a live online room, so there were items which didn’t do anything but probably would have in person.
I wouldn’t say that the puzzles were particularly hard, which is odd as this felt like a really challenging room. We simply over complicated things and tried to solve puzzles before having all the information. There was even one puzzle in the room that was highly unusual and in a physical room would probably never happen, but it seems like anything goes online, right?
There were a number of padlocks in the room but the signposting was decent so we knew where to go and for what. In addition to the padlocks there was also a cool use of tech in a few places and we had a few moments where we were all rather impressed by what we were witnessing.
GM/CLUE SYSTEM
We didn’t have any straight-up clues, but I’m pretty sure that Mister X subtly pointed us in the right direction a few times. In fact, thinking back now I’m sure of it. I think that is testament to how well that this room was run is that we don’t even know if we had help.
Mister X remained in character right up until the end of our mission, when he finally showed his face and we were able to have a conversation with him. Often you can find ways they could improve, but honestly, I can’t.
FINAL THOUGHTS
This game is different, it has no bells and whistles like inventories, yet it still stands out as a special experience thanks to an excellent gamesmaster and a beautifully decorated space. If I could get to Italy, this game would be on my ‘must play’ list.
GOOD TO KNOW
- Number of connections: 4 maximum
- Price: 30€ – 50€
- Devices: Desktop/Laptop
- Platform: Zoom
- Inventory: No
- 360º View: No (but photos provided)
- Time Zone: Rome (CEST)
Final Rating:
| Puzzles | |
| Concept/Execution | |
| GM/Clue System | |
| Value for Money | |
| Enjoyment |
Team: 5 players
Time Remaining: 5 minutes
Website: https://bruumescape.simplybook.it/v2/
*Disclaimer: we weren’t charged for this experience, but this has not influenced our review.
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