Escape Rooms Ennis: The Beach Bar (Play at Home)

If you like Pina Colada’s…

You have finally been offered the job of your dreams, and you celebrate by taking the ultimate tropical holiday before you begin your new job.  But on the last night of your vacation you celebrate a little bit TOO much, and you have lost your passport somewhere at the beach bar.  You have one hour to find your passport or you will miss your return flight and lose your new job!

Thanks to a recent house move it had been two weeks since we’d last played an escape room, and we were starting to get withdrawal symptoms. Kindly our friends over at Brit of an Escape Habit invited us along to join them in playing The Beach Bar by Escape Rooms Ennis, and escaping to a beach bar, even virtually, sounded very much needed!

Thinking about it, I think this was our first virtual visit to Ireland, so it’s always nice to tick another destination off the first.

We received the email confirmation from Escape Rooms Ennis well ahead of time. So at the allotted time we clicked on the links for Zoom and Telescape and we were ready to go, drinks at the ready!

CONCEPT/EXECUTION

The Beach Bar plays out like most online avatar games, meaning that you ‘control’ (order around) your GM/host who is physically in the room. From what I understand, this is a regular in-person escape room that they have tweaked slightly to make it work online, and they’ve done a good job.

I wouldn’t say there was anything particularly ‘wow’ about this game, but the beach bar setting certainly felt unique (to us) and generally this was just a fun game to play, nothing serious, just a great way to spend 60 minutes.

The Telescape portal worked well with the game and offered us a chance to view things in more detail and also look around the room using the 360 view. In fact, everything with this game seemed to work as it was supposed to and we had no issues at all (except our own stupidity at times). Obviously you’ll need your speakers turn on for the Zoom link, but Telescape also uses audio, and to great effect.

PUZZLES

As you may expect being in a beach bar, pretty much all the puzzles were related to alcohol, or music and they all fitted with the theme perfectly – even the host was dressed in a hawaiian shirt and she was behind the camera not in front of it!

There was a bit of technology in this game but mostly solving puzzles would result in combinations for padlocks, but with decent signposting it never took us long to work out what combination went with which padlock. I can’t say I’ve been to many beach bars but I think there’s a good chance that things may be locked with padlocks, so that could be authentic?

Puzzle types were varied and were enough to keep us on our toes; simple maths, decoding, searching and logic reasoning all made an appearance. Early on it felt like we were flying through the puzzles but as we progressed we slowed significantly, this wasn’t the fault of the puzzles but we got hung up on something that we didn’t have all the information for. Once we had the information we solved it pretty quickly and were able to move forward.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

I don’t know what it is, but someone with an Irish accent can make even the dullest of situations sound interesting, so when you put an Irish accent in a well made escape room you’re pretty much guaranteed a good time. Our avatar, Sarah, was a wonderful host and made us feel very welcome in this tropical beach bar. Her camera work was steady and the feed was clear at all times.

We didn’t directly ask for any clues in this game, although at one point I think we were close, but Sarah was very good at subtly moving the camera over something that we may not have spotted, or was suddenly needed. I think had we been stuck for any serious length of time she would have probably nudged us back in the direction with a bit less subtlety. Sarah remained in character at all times and seemed genuinely concerned that we may not find her lost passport and help get her home in time to not lose her job (fortunately we succeeded).

FINAL THOUGHTS

Our first virtual trip to Ireland was a fun one and The Beach Bar was a great choice. A simple looking room but with added extras that make it fun from start to the end – just be warned, you may get a song or two stuck in your head after this!

GOOD TO KNOW

• Number of connections: Upto 6 people
• Price: 2 Players €50.00, 3-6 Players €75.00
• Devices: Computer recommended
• Platform: Zoom / Telescape (browser)
• Inventory: Yes
• 360º View: Yes
• Time Zone: Ennis, Ireland (GMT)

Final Rating:

Team: 4 players

Time Taken: 46 minutes

Website: https://www.escaperoomsennis.com