Enigma Mission: Mission Enigma (Budapest) 

Freakin’ Lasers!

The Enigma has fallen into the wrong hands! It takes a well-timed and precisely executed action to recover it.

Can you do it?

Our second game in Budapest, but our first at Enigma Mission (Flux was up next), was the confusingly named, Mission Enigma. When we travel to another country for escape rooms we like to play as many games as possible at a venue and try and fit them all on one trip. So after playing this 90 minute game we would be going straight into Flux – playing them in order of creation.

We mostly travelled around Budapest by walking or using Uber. This was a location that we got an Uber to due to convenience. We arrived at the venue which felt like it was in the middle of residential streets and entered the building where we were greeted by our host, although we didn’t catch his name.

The waiting area had a couple of couches and was a comfortable place to sit while our host finished getting our game ready. After a very short wait, he returned and proceeded to give us our mission briefing and the health and safety spiel. With that out of the way, he led us to the room and our time began.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

Mission Enigma was a bit of an odd set as I’m not 100% sure on the story or how it all fitted together. I think we were breaking into a building so thinking about the spaces, they all made sense in that context. We played as a team of four and found that there was plenty of space for us to move around and quite a number of rooms for us to explore as our adventure continued.

The first room felt like a bit of an odd one, not in a bad way, just an odd way? It’s hard to describe but as we moved on from that space we found areas that felt like they were perhaps more ‘expected’. One thing we certainly appreciated about the room design was that lighting was never really an issue.

This game felt very quiet, with no ambient noise being played so there was nothing to keep the momentum up. Well I say that, but at one key point in the game music is introduced and it was the perfect choice to add a bit of fun and tension.

PUZZLES

Mission Enigma was a game that played out in a non-linear fashion which was great for our team as we like to split up – divide and conquer and all that! But there were times in the game where we were all brought back together for certain bigger puzzles – sometimes they required more than one person, other times there was a bit of standing around watching one person complete them.

The puzzles were all fair and I can’t recall getting any help which again is testament to the puzzle design and signposting. Searching, observation, teamwork, logic and coordination/skill were the bulk of the puzzles.

If you’ve looked at the official Enigma Mission website then you’ve probably seen photos of this game and what one would possibly consider the ‘highlight’ of the game (if you haven’t, don’t look, keep it a surprise). That highlight was pretty cool but it’s one of those puzzles that I could easily see as being frustrating and going on for a long time if you struggle with it.

This was quite a padlock heavy game, so solving puzzles most often gave a code, but I can’t recall ever really being unsure where the code went, so that’s positive. There was some tech involved too, so if you’re not a huge fan of padlocks, don’t let that put you off.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

I didn’t get the GM’s name , but it’s quite possible that he told us and it got lost in translation somewhere. He was friendly and made us feel welcomed though, so that’s the main thing. Like I said, I can’t recall that we actually needed any hints in this game so I’m going to make an assumption that if we had needed any help it would have likely been a similar system to their other game we played, which would have been audio clues over the speakers.

This game didn’t have any visual timer, but we were notified every 15 minutes to give us an update on our time.

ANYTHING ELSE

There was nothing that stood out about this game, and there are better in Budapest, but I’m still glad we played it. The set was interesting and  the puzzles were varied. Their newer game, ‘Flux’ is probably the more impressive game, but this is still fine as a filler game.

Success/Failed

Final Rating:

Team: 4 players

Address: Budapest, Csángó u. 13, 1134 Hungary

Website: https://szabadulosjatek.com/