Prodigy Escape Rooms: The Lost Temple (Exeter)

Temple-tastic!

In the depths of the deepest jungle a lost temple awaits. The bravest of explorers are needed to unlock the treasures that have been hidden away for centuries. Fame and glory await the most fearless of adventurers capable of overcoming the temple’s secrets in our adventure escape room.

We last visited Prodigy Escape Rooms back in July 2022 when we played Mission Impawsible (now closed) and The Haunting of Mount Clifton Manor, and we’ve been itching to go back ever since. When we were there we had a sneak peak of their build for The Lost Temple, but at that point it was a building site with a few fake plants waiting to be used, so it would be interesting to see what the game ended up like.

Prodigy have car parking on site but we decided to park in town and stroll down (we need the exercise) and when we arrived we were greeted by our host Ella and one of the lovely owners, Dan. After a lovely little chat in their comfortable waiting area, and with items safely locked away in the locker, it was time to get down to business.

Ella disappeared and moments later our host, Arnold (who looked remarkably similar to Ella?) appeared. We received our health and safety briefing in reception and Arnold then guided us down the corridors to The Lost Temple. After a little more story from Arnold, and then a video briefing in the room, we were on our way!

Oh, and it’s also worth noting that this game has different difficulty settings so you can decide before you play if you want things a little easier or harder (we went for hard mode).

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

First things we noticed about The Lost Temple was that it was clear that Prodigy had really upped their game from their first two games. That’s not to say their earlier games weren’t decent, this was just a step up.

I’ve been in a few lost temples in my time, ok all of those lost temples were escape rooms, but it still counts, and this room had the things you’d hope to see; ‘ruined’ walls, check. Ivy/foliage, check. Odd looking languages? Check.

The one thing The Lost Temple didn’t have which I was expecting to see, was sand. Many temple games have sandy floors which then gets in your shoes and all over the venue – none of that here! In hindsight, I now know why. Speaking with Dan after the game he said that the game was made to be accessible for wheelchair users.So provided one person on the team is able to be more mobile (a little crawling) then it’s playable without really anything being missed by a wheelchair user.

Other than the lovely set design, everything felt like it belonged, well as much as it can being an escape room. It had background noises being played at all times which helped immerse us in the jungle, and of course we were given standard ‘explorer’ headgear to wear to make us look the part.

PUZZLES

So, as I said earlier this game has adjustable difficulty settings. This doesn’t mean that you get more or less puzzles, it’s just about how much assistance you are given. If you go easier then perhaps you’ll be given more information to get you started, and harder you may have a little bit more work to do. It’s a nice way to do it as going ‘easy’ still means you get the full experience. We went ‘hard’ so this review is based on that level.

The Lost Temple was a mixture of linear and non-linear game-play, with the early stages being very linear but the latter part opens up to a point where multiple puzzles can be completed simultaneously or in any order. Completing puzzles either resulted in a code for a padlock (but there weren’t too many of these) or tech would trigger something to open – and there was a good amount of tech used.

The puzzles were mostly all fair (more on that in a moment) and fitted the temple theme well. Communication, observation, wordplay, decoding, skill, and some maths all made an appearance. If you’re not a fan of search heavy rooms then this is a good choice as I don’t remember much searching at all really. The use of colour also featured quite heavily on at least one puzzle.

Ok, so being totally honest, there were two puzzles we didn’t get on with. One was a good puzzle. We just had some issues that meant we couldn’t complete it, or maybe we could but it would have taken a very long time. Fortunately I think Arnold took pity on us and when we put in our solution I think he just manually triggered a completion.

The other puzzle made Liz rage with the force of a thousand suns and I think kinda tainted the experience for her. The puzzle was certainly a puzzle and we knew what we had to do, but for us on the hardest mode it became something we couldn’t do and it got very frustrating. Throw in the fact that it used colours and it made a puzzle that Liz had to take more ownership over. We did get through it, but I’m 99.79% sure that ‘Arthur’ turned down the difficulty level to make it a bit more achievable for us. In our debrief we did decide that ultimately this puzzle was fair, but ignoring the fact that it was already in “hard mode,” playing as a team of two actually stepped up the difficulty by another level. If we’d had a third, it probably would have only caused Liz to rage with the force of five hundred suns.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Arnold was our man in the sky for this one and if we ever needed assistance we simply needed to ask using the walkie-talkie that we were given. I’m not sure if we ever actually asked for help, but Arthur was playing close attention and knew just when to chime in with assistance.

I mentioned that there was a screen in the room that gave us our room briefing, well this was also used to play video every now-and-then to let us know how much time we had remaining . This wasn’t just a TV placed on a wall though, no. Prodigy had put a little more effort into it so that it looked more like a ‘field TV’ that could have feasibly been carried to the jungle.

ANYTHING ELSE

This game is clearly a step-up for Prodigy on set design and the tech they have integrated into the experience. Ok, one or two puzzles annoyed us, but we still enjoyed our time in The Lost Temple, and it was nice to see them make a more challenging game that enthusiasts can get stuck into.

We had a long chat with Dan after the game and one thing is clear, this game is still evolving. Little tweaks here and there to make gameplay smoother, perhaps make puzzles simpler or in somecase more challenging. Prodigy are always keen to improve, and they genuinely listen to feedback on how to improve things. I just hope they don’t make changes based on our stupidity, as this is already a solid game and no-one should ever make changes based on two idiot reviewers.

Success/Failed

Final Rating:

Team: 2 players – escaped in 41:01

Address: 26b Clifton Hill, Exeter, Devon, EX1 2DJ

Website: https://www.prodigyescapes.co.uk

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