Exit19: Dragon Island (Wroclaw)

Beautiful set, but…hmmmm

A crash landing in the heart of an unknown island, unleashing the power of the four elements, shaman rituals, deadly spiders, a chatty toucan or a face-to-face meeting with the queen of the dragons is just a fraction of what awaits you. An adventure filled with good humour, adrenaline and excitement!

During a vacation trip to Borneo, your plane has crash-landed. You crashed on a mysterious island that did not appear on any previously known maps. Amongst the locals there are legends about an island where for thousands of years a family of Red Dragons has guarded the hidden treasure. Could it be…?

Your biggest challenge awaits you during this incredible adventure in the middle of the jungle at the entrance of a mysterious temple. After a rough landing, you gather around the totem and are greeted on the island by a chatty and all-knowing toucan Gizelard. This will certainly not be an ordinary day…

Anyone looking to book an escape room trip to Poland will pretty much have one certainty on their stops – Exit19 in Wroclaw. Exit19 are of course famous for their TERPECA stalwart, Abandoned Hotel. Yes, we were going to play Abandoned Hotel, but that wasn’t this day. This was our travel day so we had two games in Poznan before catching a train down to Wroclaw, and as we had a little spare time we decided to book an extra game: Dragon Island.

Exit19 are centrally located in Wroclaw so they’re very easy to get to, and thanks to a text message we received before the game, we knew exactly where to go, and when to arrive.

I can’t be sure if there is a lift to the basement where our game was located, but I couldn’t see one. We descended the themed stairway, and entered the even more impressively themed waiting area where we were greeted by a couple of hosts and invited to store away our items, and fill in the waiver.

With all the formalities out of the way, we joined our host in another part of the waiting area where he asked about our experience and gave us our briefings. We then donned our blindfold goggles and were guided into the game to take our flight.

Of course nothing in escape rooms ever goes to plan and our flight didn’t quite end up being as smooth as one would have liked. So with the ominous final words of “good luck”, we removed our goggles and our time began.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

Just from looking at the reception area at Exit19 we had a feeling that we were in for something special, and unsurprisingly the quality of the set design was just as high quality.

The space that Dragon Island took place in wasn’t huge, but it was used well and had plenty of surprises to keep us on our toes, and our knees in a few places (crawling and climbing needed). We played as a team of two and this felt like a good size. You could go bigger, but I wouldn’t want to go much bigger.

Ambient noises were being played at all times, and a friendly voice was always there to drop in some words of encouragement or wisdom. In terms of lighting I would say that the game was lit well for ambience but was never too dark to see what we needed, and additional lighting was given when required.

This game had many theatrical moments and occasions where we just stepped back and watched the magic happen. The ending also brought a satisfying end to our mission.

PUZZLES

This is one of those games that has moments of linearity, and some multi-linear moments too. This worked well for how we like to play as we could split up on some things, but then come back together for others.

All of the puzzles felt like they belonged in the beautiful set that they had created, and it was quite clear to see what we could interact with and what was purely set dressing.

Observation, searching, colours, audio, teamwork, pattern recognition and following directions made up the bulk of the puzzles, and most were fair…

I say ‘most’ because one puzzle felt extremely unfair. I’ll talk about it more in the next section, but despite knowing what to do, and how to do it, we couldn’t get the right solution and wasted the best part of 10 mins on it – killing our momentum and sapping our enthusiasm. An attentive GM and a different clue system could have prevented this, but in a corporate location like this, sometimes things work differently.

I can’t actually recall a single padlock in this game, so if you love tech and diegetic puzzle design, then this could be a winner.  Pretty much everything we did resulted in tech triggering something, somewhere in the room, but we were always guided to what we had done.

I did quite enjoy some of the puzzles in the latter part of the game. They had some cool mechanics and fit well into the theme, and what we were supposed to be doing. Although there was another puzzle that felt like it went on a bit too long and was a time waste.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

The clue system for this game was both good, and bad. It was a great lesson in how to essentially automate your clue system, but we found that it wasn’t overly intuitive, so when we had issues with that puzzle, the clue system kept telling us to do things we’d already done – and there seemed to be no additional help.

This obviously is nothing new, as we were given a secondary clue system when we entered, a walkie-talkie, so we could get extra help if needed. After much frustration we had to use it, and got the assistance we needed.

After our game, we spoke with our host briefly and asked him to explain the puzzle we had issues with. The response was essentially that many people have issues with this, and it’s not from not knowing what to do, but their solution is ‘uncertain’. It’s a shame as this one puzzle pretty much derailed our whole experience.

A timer was also integrated into the game so we could see how much time we had remaining.

ANYTHING ELSE

If you’re looking for great set design then this could be a good choice. But be warned, if colours are not your strength, maybe consider another game, even if you have perfect colour vision!

We played quite a few games on our Polish trip but Exit19 felt like the most commercial of the bunch – you can decide if that’s good or bad but their clue system, despite being cute, became frustrating.

Success/Failed

Final Rating:

Team: 2 Players

Address: Wrocław, ul. Ofiar Oświęcimskich 19

Website: https://exit19.pl/en/