De Gouden Kooi: The Secret of Saint-Rumoldus (Mechelen)

A Great Warm-up Game

An old legend tells the tale of the cowardly murder of Saint-Rumoldus, patron saint of Mechelen, around the year 770. In the vicinity of Mechelen, deep in the forests of the rural town of Hombeek, Rumoldus realised his plan to build a small church.

Much against the custom of his time, he paid his construction crew a fair salary for their work, leading the locals to suspect that Rumoldus had to be exceptionally wealthy. During an evening stroll on the church grounds one night, Rumoldus was mugged by two men. They beat him to death and robbed him of what little money he had on him, before dumping his body in the river Dijle and fleeing the crime scene. A couple of days later, a passerby noticed a magical light shining over the water. Rumoldus’ body was recovered from the water and serenely laid out in the church.

Ever since, a devoted congregation has been watching over his grave and church. Every now and then, ‘miracles’ occur in the church of Saint-Rumoldus: tears start to well up in the eyes of the saint statues, candles suddenly light up near the shrine…

That is why believers from all corners of the country come to visit the church to honour Saint-Rumoldus.

Out of the blue, you receive a call from pastor Albay, nowadays the custodian of the church. Impressed and driven to despair by recent “abnormal activities”, the priest was forced to flee from the church. He now needs your help to find out what is going on and to discover the cause of the miracles…

A trip to Belgium has been on the cards for a while, but it was the imminent closure of Demise of the Gricers that kicked us into gear and made us book this trip. As it turns out, Gricers got a stay of execution so there was no rush! Still, it was good to make this trip happen, and we managed to plan quite a nice little road trip around Belgium to hit up the key games that we kept hearing about.

First up on our trip, after arriving into Brussels early, hitting up Brewdog, and then renting a car from the airport, was The Secret of Saint-Rumoldus at De Gouden Kooi. At the time of playing, De Gouden Kooi had two games, Saint-Rumoldus and the more well known Han’s Revenge (which we were booked into play on our return leg).

We found a convenient car-park not too far from the venue and then had a lovely walk through the town of Mechelen. If you have any time to kill in town, then make sure you have a wander, it’s beautiful! Speaking of beautiful, De Gouden Kooi was probably one of the nicest and most welcoming escape room venues we’d ever been to. It was situated next to the river, with large windows and a waiting area that felt like it was straight out of a Scandinavian design magazine – at first, we weren’t sure this was the right place.

Upon arrival we were greeted by one of the Gouden Kooi team behind the reception desk and then took a seat in the lovely waiting area. While waiting, we made use of the lockers to lock away our personal belongings and made use of the facilities. Before too long our host appeared and escorted us through to a secondary waiting area. This area was where we got to have a little chat with our host and then received the health and safety plus a little bit of a mission briefing.

After our host departed we were instructed to head down the corridor and stop at the red light, when it turned green we could go through the door. This wasn’t the door to the game though, no, this was the door through to another briefing area. This area had a projector playing what felt like a high quality cinematic movie, that brought us fully up to speed on the story, and then fully threw us right into it – and our experience began.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

Han’s Revenge seems to get all the attention at this venue, but The Secret of Saint-Rumoldus is a game that should definitely not be overlooked. We encountered a number of spaces in this game and each one was designed perfectly, and most of them were really quite spacious and certainly a spectacle.

Lighting was never really an issue in Saint-Rumoldus, yes it was dark at times but the lighting was more atmospheric than anything else and didn’t cause issues with what we needed to see. Lighting was also used well to help us focus our attention on the correct things.

I’m not sure how old this game is, but nothing in there felt run-down or broken which was nice. De Gouden Kooi clearly takes pride in their games and it shows.

This probably isn’t the most accessible of games out there. You will need at least one person on your team who is comfortable going up a rather steep ladder, and crawling. I couldn’t see any work-arounds for these areas, so if that’s an issue, it’s probably worth having a rethink or contacting the venue to double check.

PUZZLES

I had a great time in The Secret of Saint-Rumoldus, not only because the set was beautiful and it was a lovely space to spend some time, but because the puzzles were really satisfying to solve.

Like any good escape room, the puzzles were varied, plentiful, and felt like part of the world we were exploring (for the most part anyway). Searching, observation, teamwork, communication, logic, and dexterity made up the bulk of the puzzles, and I’d say we enjoyed pretty much all of them. I say ‘pretty much’ as there was one puzzle that felt like a bit of a stretch, but with some timely GM interaction, we got back on track.

I don’t recall that many padlocks in this game, there probably were some, but they aren’t burned into my memory so I would guess that they were the exception rather than the rule. What we did find was that a lot of the puzzles we solved resulted in some form of tech triggering something – either close by or in another part of the experience.

Just when we thought this experience was over, we encountered a new space that felt very different to everything we had seen before in Saint-Rumoldus. A fun puzzle that wasn’t hard, but was enjoyable and brought the experience to an end on a high note.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Our GM was lovely, both before the game and after, and seemed to really enjoy their job – and this reflected in their hosting. If we ever needed help, we simply had to shout out and ask for it. The help would then come through a speaker system in the room(s), and I don’t recall needing to ask for much help (except on that one puzzle… and a search fail…), but when we did, we didn’t have to wait long and it seemed to get us back on course.

ANYTHING ELSE

The Secret of Saint-Rumoldus is perhaps the sibling that one doesn’t think about with De Gouden Kooi as all the attention goes to Han’s Revenge. However, don’t overlook this game! Saint-Rumoldus has an expansive and well designed set, plenty of fun puzzles to solve, and a story that is influenced by a local Mechelen legend.

Success / Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 4 players – 50 mins

Address: Haverwerf 7, 2800 Mechelen

Website: https://degoudenkooi.be/en/