Like a cartoon adventure
Playing the role of an extra special secret agent, from the Super Duper Secret Agent Service. You’ve heard that master villain, Dr.Incognito, is nearly ready to launch their evil plans for total world domination.
The location of Dr.Incognito’s secret lair has been identified. You’ve been sent on a Totally Terrific Top Secret Mission to stop them.
Equipped with nothing but your wits and your brilliant brain, you must correctly identify the real Dr.Incognito. Only with the correct name will you be able to stop their evil plans for world domination.
Once Dr. Incognito has been stopped, you will need to escape the Secret Lair before it self-destructs.
We’d been planning to visit Escape Nation for a while and our 200th escape room seemed like a good occasion for a visit. Thanks to a recommendation from Amy at BritOfAnEscapeHabit we booked up The Citadel as room 199, and then Incognito’s Secret Lair was number 200.
After a short debrief from The Citadel and a water break, we were feeling ready for Incognito. There was a short health and safety and room specific briefing that took place outside the room, we were also given some special spy related tools to assist us. Our GM, also explained how there were little side missions that could be completed to earn more time, interesting…
When we got in the room it was clear to see that this was very different to The Citadel, it was much brighter, both in terms of lighting and colour, and had a much more lighthearted theme. If you’ve ever done any of the rooms at ClueQuest, particularly Operation Black Sheep, then you may feel that this room has the same feel about it as theirs do – colourful and fun.
On entering the room we watched a short video from Incognito himself that essentially outlined our mission/his dastardly plan. Once the video ended our time began and we had 60 minutes (ish) to stop him and save the world.
PUZZLES
Incognito had a bit of everything in his lair, logic, decoding, observation, lateral thinking and a little searching, all playing out in a non-linear fashion. We particularly enjoyed how the puzzles all fitted to the story and despite solving lots of smaller puzzles we knew the overall goal that we were working towards.
In terms of difficulty, I wouldn’t class this as a hard room, but there was a good mixture of puzzles that ranged in difficulty from easy to a bit trickier. The one thing we struggled on was simple: a prop that we found did something that even the owners didn’t know it did (shouldn’t be an issue anymore).
The Citadel was a dark room but Incognito’s was very much the opposite. With decent lighting in the room we never had any issues with being able to see clearly, but torches were provided just in case we needed a little boost I never like difficulty-by-darkness as a room feature so it’s always refreshing when we go into a well lit space.
IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN
With cartoonesque design and bright colours all over the place, as soon as we entered this room we knew it was going to be a lighthearted one.
The room design fitted perfectly with the theme and the cartoony feel felt well applied to all the puzzles contained within. There were a number of padlocks but not excessively so, and the padlocks that were there didn’t feel too out of place or annoy us at all. Coupled with the padlocks was a good use of tech and more tangible/physical puzzles.
Another added bonus was that everything in the room served a purpose and they didn’t feel the need to add any annoying red herrings (a pet peeve). Even the additional side missions were a bit of fun that we found actually added to the enjoyment.
If your memory is as bad as ours, then fear not, they provide a paper and pen so you can take down notes and help work out those tricky puzzles.
GM/CLUE SYSTEM
Our clues in Incognito’s lair were not delivered by our GM, no, they were delivered by General Goodman who you may be able to tell from the name was a ‘Good man’ and was on standby to assist us if needed.
When clues were delivered they came via a screen with an audible notification to let you know that a clue had been posted. We needed one little nudge as a piece of equipment we were interacting with was a bit touchy and we didn’t want to break it.
ANYTHING ELSE
Selecting a ‘milestone’ is never easy as you don’t want to pick one that is poor. Fortunately, Incognito’s Secret Lair was a great choice, with humour and fun it made for a lighthearted but thoroughly enjoyable experience.
Success/Failed
Final Rating:
Operation | |
Puzzles | |
Room Design | |
GM/Clues | |
Excitement |
Team: 2 players – escaped in 39:26 with no clues
Address: 1st Floor, 18 Martin Street, Stafford, ST16 2LG
Website: https://www.escapenation.co.uk
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