Mystique: AI (Budapest)

Clean, and Clinical

Imagine that behind the computers of our secret laboratory, our development engineer has been working on an artificial intelligence project for months. The goal is to create a brave new world where people work with the help of supercomputers. There’s just a little more work to be done on the first Artificial Intelligence prototype, but we need your help. Something is missing that will change the humanity forever. Find and open the way out in 60 minutes.

We were three games in at Mystique having already played Cube, Pirate Bay and Time Machine – next up was AI, soon to be followed by Fairy Tale, The Lost Crystal Skull and The Witch. Once again, AI was a game at Mystique that we knew nothing about.

Mystique have three venues, although they’re all close together, so the first challenge is arriving at the correct one. AI is located in one of the venues that only has two games, although we only played the one there. The waiting area (and game) is down some stairs and in a basement area so needless to say accessibility is not really a thing.

When we arrived we were greeted by our GM and directed to store our belongings away. AI seemed to be the main game for this venue as the reception area felt very clinical and had signage around that helped ease us into the theme.

After a short chat with our host, it was time to get down to business. We were given a little briefing outside the room about what we were there to do, and then we were shown in and our mission was underway.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

We’ve played a few AI themed games and they generally seem to have that same sparse, white, clinical feel about them, and this AI game ticked all those boxes. It was one of those spaces that you enter and look around thinking “where the hell do we start?!”. Fortunately the main central area of the game was a good size and our team of four certainly weren’t tripping over each other.

As the game progressed, so did the spaces we encountered, although they all stuck to the same design principles of ‘of less is more’ and ‘paint it white’. Saying that, the set design was good and it felt like the type of space that you would encounter in a world gone mad that is run by supercomputers.

The game had a number of cool areas and each one had things that were different to the previous area, some massively so. One area was particularly fun to interact with, and another was just quite joyful and delightful in the way we had to interact with it.

AI had a central area that we constantly had to return to, the same area where we both started and finished our mission. This meant there was a lot of back and forth in the game, but fortunately I can only recall one step in the whole experience (other than the stairs to get down to the lobby).

PUZZLES

This game was a very tech heavy game. I recall there being a few theme-appropriate padlocks but other than that, we mostly used various items to make tech trigger. As I mentioned, there were some really cool interactions and even after nearly 500 games we still saw some things that we hadn’t seen before.

The puzzles also related to the theme and the mission at hand, and generally revolved around; observation, pattern recognition, logic, and possibly some light maths. Nothing in this game was overly taxing but still, a few of the puzzles were quite fun to complete thanks to the tech used in the game.

There was one puzzle that seemed a little weak. We thought we were going to have to do something more involved with it, but it ended up being done in our first interaction and I’m not 100% sure if it can be classed as a puzzle or if it was just a task.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

In general we found the hosts in Budapest to be not quite as friendly as we’ve experienced in other places, but our host for AI was polite and seemed to be happy to see us – so that was nice.

I don’t believe we needed any clues in AI as we seemed to once again click with the puzzles and make good progress through them. If we had needed clues, they would have likely come via the walkie-talkie that we were given before starting our mission.

ANYTHING ELSE

AI was very much a typical AI game. But with decent tech and a system for keeping track of our progress we always knew how far along we were and how close we were to completion. Probably not the most exciting game at Mystique, but if you’re looking for a ‘filler’ game, then AI is not a bad shout.

Success/Failed

Final Rating:

Team: 4 players – 28:17 taken

Address: Mystique Room 2, Budapest, Tátra u. 4, 1136 Hungary

Website: https://www.mystiqueroom.hu/en