Mythologic: The Island (Play at Home)

We’re a bit ‘Lost‘

As your eyes start to open, a taste of sand in your mouth and the feeling of wet clothes on your body. It becomes clear that it was not a nightmare and the plane you were on has come down. You vaguely recall the tannoy saying brace, brace but that’s the last thing you remember.

We had the pleasure of playing Mythologic’s real life games before the pandemic started and they were great fun, especially ‘The Game’ which had lots of Jumanji-esque nostalgia about it. So we were pleased to see they released an online game to help them see through these difficult times.

Some games we will hear a lot about before we play but The Island was one that had gone under our radar and we knew nothing about it, which isn’t always a bad thing. So without knowing what to expect, we sat down as a team of two, and before we knew it we were crash landing on to the Island.

CONCEPT/EXECUTION

The Island takes place on the main Mythologic website rather than on a separate site or Google Docs page. Before you start you have the option to play the soundtrack to help you feel more like you’re on an island (it’s about 90 minutes long).

The game plays out in a linear fashion with no room to deviate. You are shown a page which (normally) has everything you need to solve the puzzle then once you think you have the answer, you click on ‘Enter Code’ (or something similar). We found this worked for the most part but we did encounter issues with trying to get back to the previous page if our answer was incorrect. If we typed in the wrong answer then the back button no longer worked so it became a bit clunky; not a deal breaker, but just something to be aware of as it became very annoying to us.

Not everything takes place in the game itself, you also have your trusty Island Notebook  which you will need to turn to to help guide you through some of the puzzles.

PUZZLES

There are a number of puzzle styles in this game so there should be plenty to keep everyone happy. Decoding, cyphers, logic, audio, visual and math puzzles all make an appearance. I must be honest though, there were more puzzles in this game that we disliked than ones we liked. That’s not to say they were bad, we just didn’t click with them at all and found some of them a bit ‘far out’ there.

Many of the puzzles we didn’t like, but one puzzle we genuinely hated. This was the type of puzzle that really felt out of place and personally I believe should never be anywhere near an escape room style game. It was a maths puzzle which didn’t help (not a fan of them), but it just felt so out of place and in the end after trying many options we just gave up and took the solutions.

Being positive though, nearly all the puzzles found a way to link to the story, so that immersion aspect was still there. One puzzle also used technology in a fun way which added a nice element of interactivity. Oh and when you type in your solutions you can see what you’re writing, it isn’t shielded or disguised as stars.

CLUE SYSTEM

We really had to make use of the clue system so I feel like quite an authority on it. The puzzles have a gradual hint system that gives you a couple of hints and then the solution, so if you were really stuck, and we were, you could still get through to play the rest of the game.

My one gripe with the clue system was that it was just a hover button, so if your mouse happened to go over the button then it would automatically reveal the answer, and as all the buttons looked the same it was easy to move your mouse over the wrong one.

FINAL THOUGHTS

We really wanted to like this game but found the puzzles really let it down. It could be that the puzzles just didn’t click for us and you may enjoy it. If you do play this game, let us know how you get on.

TOOLS REQUIRED

• Laptop/Desktop computer (or smartphone, perhaps)
• Notepad for note taking

Final Rating:

Team: 2 players

Time Taken: 61 mins

Website: https://mythologicescaperooms.co.uk

*Disclaimer: we weren’t charged for this experience, but this has not influenced our review.