Descifra Escapes: The Labyrinth (Madrid)

Shoe’s off?

The mind of some geniuses is a labyrinth where sometimes even they get lost.

Naricio Tornelio Exer’s body has been lying inert for days and for days he has been wandering imprisoned and disoriented somewhere in his memory. His consciousness has been fragmented and time advances relentlessly. Soon nothing and no one will be able to bring him back.

You, the mind-awakers, have been chosen to go in search of him. In little more than an hour, the risk of losing your sanity far exceeds what a normal human mind can withstand without succumbing to delirium.

The final game of our weekend in Madrid was The Labyrinth, at Descifra. This was the fifth game of the trip, after playing well regarded games like Magic Universe and Project DCrisis. We had earlier played The Storm at Descifra, and after killing time in a lovely little square nearby, we returned to the venue for their most well known game, The Labyrinth.

We entered through the same entrance that we had entered for when we played The Storm, but this time the corridor was very dark, and we went further into it. When we got to the end, our GM asked us to take a seat, and this is where we received our mission briefing and a special piece of equipment.

With the mission briefing fresh in our heads, and having been shrunk down to a miniscule size, it was time to literally enter the mind of Naricio Tornelio Exer (not to be confused with Maurits Cornelis Escher, M.C Esher). Of course it wouldn’t be overly immersive to enter someone’s mind through a door, oh no, this had a different entrance all together!

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

The world ‘labyrinth’ conjures up many different images depending on who you speak to. Does it make you think of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth, or perhaps the Jim Henson classic, ‘Labyrinth’ from 1986? For me, I always go straight to the 1986 classic, but this was certainly not that. This was more of a trippy journey through the mind of someone inspired by M.C Esher (not familiar with him, check out ‘Relativity’).

In terms of making you feel like you’re perhaps going crazy, or have been here before, the game design was pretty decent. There was a clever mechanic involved to ensure you didn’t have unfettered access through-out his mind, but areas were only accessible by the choices you made.

We encountered a number of distinct and arguably bonkers spaces throughout this labyrinth, and each new space felt very distinct to the space you had just left. The game was clearly well looked after as I didn’t notice any signs of wear and tear to any of the props. We played as a team of four, and despite there being a few areas where the spaces got rather tight, we didn’t really struggle with space. I would guess that this game isn’t accessible though, we had to slide, crawl, and manoeuvre, and those with limited accessibly could struggle.

There was one annoying mechanic in the game that seemed to serve as a barrier to stop you moving as freely as one would like. It was technically a puzzle, but was simple enough so that repeating it regularly wasn’t as annoying as it could have been, but that’s not to say it didn’t get annoying to us.

PUZZLES

The Labyrinth is one of those games that takes place in the mind of, shall we say, a ‘creative person’, so they can get away with making any puzzle feel like it belongs. Obviously, being a ‘labyrinth’ having a good sense of direction will help, although I don’t see anyone getting lost in here. Searching, observation (massively so), teamwork, communication, skill, pattern recognition, and minor maths made up the bulk of the puzzles.

Generally we got on ok with the puzzles, and had a good time, but there was one puzzle that seemed to instantly kill the fun for us and really halted our progress in the game. I don’t want to say exactly what the puzzle was, but it’s something that you know what you have to do instantly, so the premise isn’t hard, but what is hard is that I would assume it has been created by AI and this instantly made it harder. It also went on for far too long, was in a location where it was hard to get the entire team involved, and generally just sucked the fun out of the game.

Couple that puzzle with another one that added some extra confusion and frustration, oh and a sneaky/dirty search puzzle/fail, and we just found ourselves wanting to liberate ourselves of this labyrinth.

The puzzles were varied, I’ll give them that, and solving them resulted in combinations for padlocks or tech triggering. For the most part it felt like we were solving things in a linear progression, but that could also be simply because as a team, we like to see everything in a game so we take time to explain puzzles to each other. But thinking back, if we were playing for time, I think there are numerous areas where we could have split up and solved things in various orders.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

I didn’t catch the name of our GM for The Labyrinth, but she greeted us in character, and fortunately (for three of us) she spoke English. It seems like Descifra don’t quite go to the same level of character immersion as some other venues we played in Madrid, but that’s fine, she was enthusiastic and did her job well.

In the game itself, clues would come over a speaker system, I assume it was supposed to be like the inner thoughts of Exer. I believe we may have had some nudges here and there, but they were disguised in such a way that sometimes it was hard to tell if it was help, or simply narrative.

ANYTHING ELSE

The Labyrinth is a game that was recommended to us, and I really wanted to love it. But we sadly came away feeling a bit flat from it, and I’m not sure why. It’s possible we were tired, or just on a high after games like Magic Universe and Project DCrisis, but this wasn’t the game for us. Saying that, I can see how others will enjoy it, and if it clicks with you, I think it will be a solid game choice if you’re in Madrid (especially if you want bonus games near the airport).

Success/Failed

Final Rating:

Team: 4 Players

Address: C. Real, 56, 28703 San Sebastián de los Reyes, Madrid, Spain

Website: https://descifra-escaperoom.es/