EO Escape Rooms: Karma Club (Sudbury)

Fun – turned up to 11!

You have been double crossed by your record producer. He has released your debut album as his own, claiming all the fame and accolades that come with a smash hit. Rumour has it the prestigious Golden Record is showcased at the popular night spot, The Karma Club, and your band want revenge. Your mission is to go undercover to the Karma Club to take back what is rightfully yours.

Will you succeed or will Karma catch up with you?

Our third game of the day at EO Escape Rooms, having just played Castaway and Captive, was Karma Club. I must admit, we booked all the games as EO Escape Rooms because their reputation preceded them but we actually knew nothing about any of their games. We had a great time in the previous games so I had high hopes for Karma Club, which I soon learnt was a nightclub themed game.

EO Escape Rooms are a great venue and it’s run by passionate enthusiasts. We can confirm that they can speak for hours about escape rooms if you let them, and we did – it was great! We love talking about all things escape rooms and we ended up spending most of the day in their premises; the perfect day? Yep.

Anyway, after a short break between games and a lovely extra chat with Kelly it was time for us to go and check out the Karma Club. So we followed Kelly outside and into a different building, where we received our mission briefing. Of course to get into any self-respecting nightclub as a member of staff, you need your lanyard. So armed with our lanyards and our mission fresh in our minds, it was time to join the party.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

It’s been a very long time since I was in a nightclub, but what I do remember of them was that the floors were sticky and generally touching anything was a bad idea. Fortunately Karma Club had all the things that one loves about nightclubs (music, lights, alcohol – not for consumption or real) and none of that horrible stickiness.

If you’ve played and loved Raver Quest at Pier Pressure in Brighton, then there’s a good chance you’ll love Karma Club too. Putting Karma Club on the same level as Raver Quest is high praise, and it deserves it. Despite having the same fun party-like feel, these are two very different games.

Karma Club has a good sense of progression through the spaces that you would expect to encounter in a nightclub, but they also get quite creative to make the spaces come to life. This is one of those games that goes from sedate to full on party in a very short space of time, and we loved every minute in this club!

The set design was spot on and everything that was in the club felt like it belonged (except us perhaps). The constant music playing gave it a party atmosphere and gave us a chance for a bit of a sing-a-long. The game then all culminated in a wonderful ending that made it apparent that our mission was complete.

PUZZLES

Being our third game played on this day, we had started to get a good idea of how they thought at EO Escape Rooms, and that showed when we played Karma Club as we managed to get on the top of the leaderboard. Of course it wasn’t all thanks to having played some of their games already, the signposting in this game was top notch so it was always clear what went with what, and we knew where to go next.

Another fun thing that EO Escape Rooms do in all their games is to add a bonus puzzle that you can solve, or not solve, at any time. This puzzle releases a 3D printed token that you hold up to the camera to receive an extra 10 minutes in the game!

Puzzles all revolved around items and tasks that you’d expect in a nightclub and generally fit into the following categories: observation, searching, maths (light), wordplay, decoding, pattern recognition, and communication to an extent. One puzzle had a very easy way to solve it, but Liz did it her own way which took longer but ended up with the same result, eventually.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

This game really clicked for us so we didn’t actually need any clues (yay), but if we had we simply had to request them and they would have been provided on a screen and accompanied by the sound of a scratching record.

ANYTHING ELSE

This was one of those games that just seemed to have the perfect flow to it. Everything made sense, everything was a joy, and our short time in Karma Club was possibly the highlight of our day. The world needs more games like this!

Success / Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 2 players – escaped in 26:13 mins (we got the bonus 10 mins)

Address: Unit 1 Drury Dr, Sudbury CO10 1WH

Website: https://www.eo-escape.co.uk/