Note to self: Learn Russian*
In the middle of the cold war, the USSR developed a secret chip which hides their missiles from the radars of their enemies. One of their scientists discovered that they will use the chip and he leaked the information to the British Government. The launching protocol has begun and you have 60 minutes to deactivate the protocol and escape from the bunker, otherwise, you will be responsible for the outbreak of World War III.
Our second room of the day at Puzzlair was ‘The Cold War Catch’ and to mix things up a bit we did this one with my brother and a couple of his friends, all relative newbies to escape rooms so I was hoping that this room was better than ‘The Lost Artworks’ that we had done just before; fortunately it was.
This room was a much more traditional room than their other one, and had a nice mixture of finding items and solving puzzles. We were there to prevent World War III – no pressure then! The GM gave us the usual briefing (this time don’t use phones) and we were off with 60 minutes to save the world.
There was no obvious starting point in this room but there were plenty of things to look at and get an idea of what may be missing, what you needed, and where to start piecing things together. Once we got the first puzzle out of the way everything seemed to come together and we got into a decent flow and starting solving the others.
At one point we had to ask for a clue as we didn’t check something properly, but other than that we were on our own. We did managed to bypass something at one point which threw us off and actually cost us more time than it saved.
This was a fun room and everyone in our group had a good time and we were very happy that we chose this room to introduce them to escape rooms. If I had to nitpick then I would say there were a few too many props/decoys/red herrings in the room that didn’t seem to do much but to distract us.
If you’re looking for a room to do in Yeovil or nearby then this one shouldn’t disappoint. There wasn’t anything that stands out as spectacular but it was a good sold room.
PUZZLES
The puzzles in this room were solid enough and none of them were overly taxing, although one of them did take a little while to work out which felt like it ruined the flow a bit. Other than that they made sense, we didn’t get annoyed with them, and they didn’t feel out of place in a room like this. Like a lot of escape rooms now there is a heavy reliance on teamwork and communication and there was one puzzle that you could just about do by yourself but it was much easier with someone else working with you.
There was one puzzle which we accidentally bypassed, some may call it cheating but to us it just felt like poor design. You shouldn’t be able to use your hand in a very simple way to bypass something so pivotal to the game, especially when you could do a little modification to it to make it foolproof/cheat proof.
IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN
I certainly didn’t feel like I was in a bunker or anything like that, but it could have been confused with a Soviet’s office (not that I have ever been in one). There were one or two nice uses of technology which made it a bit more fun and generally it was well thought out.
GM/CLUE SYSTEM
Clues and nudges were delivered on the TV screen as and when you needed or requested them. The GM was attentive and on the ball and seemed to have a good grasp of where we were and how we were progressing
ANYTHING ELSE
If you like more traditional rooms, or want an introduction to escape rooms then this is a good room to go for. We didn’t rate their other room in Yeovil but this one was the standout winner of the day. *You don’t need to learn russian to complete this room, but it may speed you up by a couple of minutes.
Success / Failure
Final Rating:
Operation | |
Puzzles | |
Room Design | |
GM/Clues | |
Excitement |
Team: 5 people
Address: Unit 18, Bartlett Court, Yeovil,BA20 2NZ
Website: https://puzzlair.co.uk/
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