Descifra Escapes: The Storm (Madrid)

It was a Stormy afternoon in Madrid

During a quiet hiking route, the sky suddenly darkens and an imposing storm descends upon you.

After a few seconds of ominous silence, the wind picks up and the downpour bursts forth in torrents.

Water everywhere. A blinding flash of lightning… a clap of thunder. The ground is flooding. Another flash… This millisecond you catch a glimpse of a silhouette. A house? Without a second thought, you run towards what looks like your lifeline.

What you have yet to discover is that the house is not just any house… it belongs to The Storm.

Our final games in Madrid were games that we booked as they were pretty close to the airport, so logistically they just made sense. The main game we had heard about at Descifra Escapes was The Labyrinth, but as we had time we decided to book in for The Storm as well. So The Storm was to be our penultimate game, with us then finishing the trip with The Labyrinth.

We decided to take an Uber from central Madrid, simply because of the convenience, and it dropped us off right outside the venue. As we had a little time to kill though we had a little explore of the area and managed to find a lovely little cafe in a square just over the road – so we spent a little time there before heading back to the venue at our allotted time.

We rang the doorbell and were greeted by our host, although we didn’t catch her name. She signalled us to come inside so we entered the darkened corridor and followed her deeper until we were standing outside the entrance to the room.

There are toilets at this venue, which is not always something one can assume, and they could be used before the game – another bonus! So after making use of the facilities we gathered around the entrance to the room where we received our mission briefings.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

Having spent a good number of my early 20s in the Adirondack Mountains, I have a pretty good idea of what makes a cabin feel authentic. Generally it revolves around lots of wooden furniture, and odd light fittings – both of which ‘The Storm’ had, so that’s a good start.

The area where we started in this game was quite small, and rather dark – which added an extra challenge that we didn’t particularly enjoy. According to Descifra’s website, this game can hold up to six people, and while that is probably ok for most of the game, if you play with six you will likely be getting in each other’s way before you actually enter the cabin.

The cabin was pleasant enough and fortunately once we were inside, the lighting improved drastically from what we had just faced outside. As mentioned, it had the usual ephemera that one would expect to find in a cabin, so much so that part of the challenge was going through everything that was there to work out what was a puzzle and what was just set dressing.

Thunder and general storm noises were being played at all times which also added to the immersion, but also added the extra challenge of ‘are these noises just noises, or are they a puzzle?’ – that’s for you to decide. Oh and it’s probably worth pointing out, this is not a horror game.

PUZZLES

When we played The Storm we played as a very experienced team of four, but for some reason we struggled with the puzzles. Everyone’s brain is wired differently, but none of our team seemed to gel with the puzzles and this meant we felt like we spent a long time standing around wondering what we should be doing. Could it have been poor signposting? Maybe. It could have just been us too though.

This game is actually bookable with adaptive difficulty, and something that I’ve not seen before, something they call ‘GMI’ which is where you can pay a little extra to have a person in the room to monitor the group – perfect for groups of kids where the parents feel like they need a break!

Although not the biggest of spaces, it was still sizable and had a number of puzzle types in there: searching, observation, audio, spatial awareness, pattern recognition and teamwork. A number of the puzzles resulted in combinations for padlocks, which were mostly labelled to indicate what went where, but there was also a little tech too. Oh and the ending, that was a lot of fun!

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Our GM did a good job and was on standby when we needed her, and that was more than we would have liked. She read the room well though, and while many other GMs may have chimed in early with help, she tested our resolve by only giving help when we asked for it. Generally tough it was because we had missed something or made a connection that seemed logical to us, but was in fact wrong.

When we asked for help, it didn’t always come quickly, but when it did, it was usually enough to get us back on track, although at times it was hard to understand what was being said over the speakers.

ANYTHING ELSE

I can see what they tried to do with The Storm but this room just really didn’t click with us, and it felt like we spent a lot of time just standing around wondering what we should be doing. It still had one or two fun moments, but we probably could have finished our trip without playing this game and we wouldn’t have felt like we missed out. But the ending was a bit of fun, so credit there.

Success/Failed

Final Rating:

Team: 4 Players

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

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