Fun 4 Brain: The Green Mile (Poznań)

It’s a long way to freedom!

The year is 1935 and as you pass the gates of Cold Mountain Penitentiary in Louisiana, you witness an execution that is about to begin. There are many indications that the condemned man is innocent, but there is no evidence of this and the execution must go ahead.

Devoid of any hope, you look at the guard preparing the prisoner for execution. A look of implacable determination is painted on his face and the condemned man’s eyes fill with fear and helplessness.

When the executioner delivers his final speech, his words are like a harsh echo that reverberates in the hearts of those gathered. He activates the power supply of the electric chair and the sound of humming electricity fills the room. All that is left for you to do is stare helplessly at the harsh surroundings of the prison and wait for events to continue.

In a moment, the warden will move a lever that will cause a tremendous current to end the life of the inmate. It only takes one movement for his insides to turn to coal.

Is there any chance to save an innocent man? Your mission begins in a place where time runs faster than the heartbeat of a prisoner sitting in the electric chair. Every decision you make can change the fate of a condemned man.

The room is inspired by the cult film “The Green Mile”. Knowledge of the film is not required, but we encourage you to watch it to see the references to the film that we have included in the Scenario.

On our trip around three Polish cities (Bydgoszcz, Poznan, Wroclaw) we were lucky enough to play some great games, and wonderful venues. But perhaps the most interesting venue was this one where The Green Mile and Fun4Brain were located, in a building lovingly known as Escapelandia. It’s a building that houses a number of different escape room companies, and nothing else – could this be an escape room dream?

We had actually already played one game by Fun 4 Brain, as we had time to kill the day before so we booked in a bonus game and played Funeral Home. Funeral Home was fun, but really it was just a warm up for their heavy hitting game, The Green Mile.

The Green Mile as you will probably guess from the name is heavily influenced by the 1999 movie of the same name. That doesn’t mean you have to have watched the movie to be able to play, but if you have, you will get a lot more from the game, and meet some familiar characters along that way.

When we played this game it was sitting pretty in the 2025 TERPECA rankings at number 69. But it debuted in the awards back in 2024 at position 52. It’s quite impressive that it only dropped 17 positions in two years, but I wonder if that is because now people are starting to get over to play it, so it still has the ‘fresh’ factor for many players.

We arrived at Escapelandia/Fun 4 Brain and were greeted by our host who showed us through to the comfortable waiting room where we waited while she got things finalised with the room. We locked away our personal possessions in the lockers provided and then she returned so we could have a little chat about our experience before we got started. Our GM then disappeared, and moments later a prison guard who looked surprisingly like our GM arrived.

‘Prison Guard GM’ took us down a flight of stairs and then proceeded to lock me away in a cell outside the room. I was then escorted into the room, and was soon followed by Liz. The only difference, I was the one in a spot of bother! And with that, our adventure began.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

As soon as we left the corridor (where my cell was) it was like we entered the movie. Everything in this game felt like it was straight out of the 1930s and the set was really rather impressive. Perhaps it didn’t have the ‘wow’ factor that some spectacle chasers look for, but like John Coffey, this game was massive. I believe the official size of this game is around 90sqm, but because of how they used the space, it felt much bigger. Every time I thought we had nearly escaped, there was a whole other area to get through.

After playing this game I had the urge to watch The Green Mile as soon as we got home. And when I think back now to all the rooms we encountered, I think I appreciate them a little more. There were so many little easter eggs scattered throughout that we quite enjoyed, but I’m sure many more of them went over our heads.

The Green Mile had a great sense of progression and each room we explored helped set us up for our eventual escape. I can’t really fault the set design at all, ignoring how expansive it was, the attention to detail was second-to-none. There was at least one moment of humour, which was nice in what is quite a bleak theme, and some impressive special effects that helped make this game stand out from the crowd.

PUZZLES

For any room that is this big, you would hope that there would be a lot of puzzles – and there were! I was looking through our detailed notes for this game and the section we have about ‘puzzles’ is 1,200 words alone. This game was chock full of puzzles, and they kept us busy throughout. We played as a team of two, but thanks to the quantity of puzzles, I would have no hesitation in saying that this game could be played, and happily enjoyed by larger teams.

The puzzles didn’t feel overly diegetic, but they did fit the theme and occasionally provided some more easter eggs from the film or a little history of the electric chair! Varying in type, the puzzles generally could be classed as: observation, teamwork, spatial relations, decoding, audio, colours, minor searching, and logic.

Although some of the puzzles gave numerical solutions when solved, there were many different systems for inputting them, not just putting combinations in locks. It was really quite impressive to see how well they utilised tech in this game to keep things interesting. Don’t get me wrong, the other game we played at Fun 4 Brain was good, but The Green Mile really was a huge step above it.

We found the puzzles to be well signposted, and as most of the game played out in a linear fashion, we often knew exactly where to go next. There were moments of non-linearity where we could work on different puzzles simultaneously, this was not the norm. Really there was only one puzzle that we weren’t a fan of and that’s because it had many variables that couldn’t always be controlled by us. Both Liz and I tried to solve it and we got widely differing results, so despite knowing what to do, we struggled with actually getting it to work.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Our host played her role perfectly, and in English, which certainly made our lives much easier! Although she was the person behind the scenes giving us help, they never came directly from her. Instead they had an immersive system in place that saw us getting assistance from perhaps other prisoners. All we had to do was ask, and the clue came in almost instantaneously. We needed one clue because we stupidly tried to shortcut a puzzle and missed the ending of it – whoops. Fortunately the clue that came in was just enough to help us realise we were being stupid.

We played a number of games in Poland, that were available in English and most of them had clue systems that came with broken English, perhaps by someone who spoke English as a second language. As much as we appreciated being able to play those games, it just made it a little harder when we needed help. In The Green Mile I would guess that the clues were either done by a native English speaker, or someone with a very good, and clear accent.

ANYTHING ELSE

This game felt like we started in The Green Mile and ended up escaping Shawshank (two great movies). Green Mile is a huge game, with a lot going on, and is a must play if you’re in the Poznan area – or just in Poland in general really.

Success/Failed

Final Rating:

Team: 2 Players – 15 mins remaining

Address: Lechicka 59, 61-695 Poznań, Poland

Website: https://fun4brain.pl/