Certainly an interesting game
An old nordic tale states the greatest war in the history of mankind is coming soon.
Odin and the humans will be devoured by the wolf Fenrir himself, and the world will eventually plunge into ice-cold seas…
One nordic prophecy, though, proclaims the arrival of brave-hearted warriors to save the world from destruction and sweep away the darkness.
Do you have what it takes to save the world? Are you courageous enough? Find it out yourselves!
Our second game at Escape Arena in Poznan, was simply called ‘Viking’. We’d just come out of Galaxy of Secrets, and still had Bat’s Shadows and Gambler’s Den to go – it was shaping up to be a rather decent day! The big game at this venue was Bat’s Shadows but as we were in town we figured we may as well play a few more.
We had the same GM throughout our time at Escape Arena, Kris. Kris was wonderfully enthusiastic and we spent far too much time talking before, during, and after our games. So much so that we were nearly late for our bookings at another venue. Whoops.
We had a little downtime between games but Kris escorted us through to a secondary waiting area specifically for Viking. There was nothing special about this are, but it was a comfortable room with a couch, a lockable box for our possessions, and theming that set the scene for the room.
In this waiting area we recieved the general health and safety briefing including the classics like ‘don’t climb in anything’ but also game specific instructions like not touching anything with a spider on it. Kris disappeared and shortly after, a Viking who looked remarkably like Kris appeared.
This oddly familiar Viking gave us our mission briefing and then led us into the room where we received something we were very happy to get… torches! It’s a little thing, but having a torch each makes all the difference when playing an escape room with darkened areas – bonus points as the torches were on theme too!
IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN
I would guess that Escape Arena had a bit of fun when creating this game as there was one area for sure that really served no purpose at all other than to make a potentially dull space fun. I think they also had fun with how they host this game, but more on that later.
Each space we encountered was well themed and very distinct from the previous space. I must admit, I didn’t really follow the story of why we were going between the spaces, but that’s nothing new for me. If nothing else, all the spaces felt particularly Scandinavian.
Some of the spaces were dark at times, but thanks to the torches we were given at the start we never had an issue with seeing things (searching for things, that’s another story!). The spaces all had music or ambient noises playing, which for someone like me who isn’t a fan of silence, was very much appreciated.
The only minor bug bear in this game was that we found things in the rooms that I can only assume were disused puzzles. They didn’t distract us for long, but they did distract us.
PUZZLES
We started this game and felt like we instantly came to a stop as we had some rather epic search fails. That trend continued throughout the game for us as we were very much not on form. Skill, decoding, observation, searching, wordplay, spatial relations, teamwork, communication – we struggled through them all!
Solving the puzzles often triggered tech to make something happen, and I can’t actually recall any padlocks in this game, but that may just be my mind playing tricks on me. The puzzles were arguably fair, and signposting was decent, but we just didn’t click with this game. It didn’t help that there was another presence in the room that was thwarting us…
GM/CLUE SYSTEM
I don’t want to give too much away about one of the creative choices they made for this game, but let’s just say that there were two ‘help’ systems: Odin and Loki, and Loki is commonly known for his mischief, trickery and lies.
Odin was generally helpful when we needed some help to get on back on track, and the help came quickly once we requested it. To request it we simply had to raise the ‘clue token’ above our heads, face a camera and then howl like wolves – simple.
I think the added dynamic in this game will be love/hate thing as it can be used to massively slow teams down, which is how it was used for us. It was funny at first but then it did get a bit annoying as we progressed.
ANYTHING ELSE
Viking wasn’t really the game for us. It was fun, yes, but we just didn’t click with the puzzles and some of them felt like they needed big leaps in logic to solve them – but again, that could have just been us being a bit dim.
Success/Failed
Final Rating:
Operation Puzzles Room Design GM/Clues Excitement
Team: 2 Players
Address: Krauthofera 55, 60-202 Poznań, Poland
Website: https://www.escapearena.pl/en
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