Winter is Coming
Baratheon’s fleet is attacking King’s Landing. He gathered the biggest fleet ever seen, and we don’t have enough canons or men to defeat them.
The only chance to save the city is to destroy the fleet using the wildfire brewed by Grand Meister Hallyne, the pyromancer, but the damn old man hid himself somewhere in the dungeon. A frightened old fart!
Tyrion, the King’s Hand, gave you a magic potion that, after you drank it, gave you the ability to telepathically control Sir Dontos, the city’s fool, around the alchemy lab in order to locate the wildfire!
We last played a game by Puzzle Punks (Secret Treasures of Dubrovnik) back in May 2020 so it was long overdue for us to give their other game, Save King’s Landing a try. Fortunately during this pandemic we’ve become good friends with a number of other bloggers and our friends Amy and Ian from Brit of an Escape Habit invited us to play this game with them.
It will come as no surprise from both the title and the description of this game that it is very much a Game of Thrones themed escape room. Just because it is Game of Thrones themed, you don’t need any knowledge of the show to solve the puzzles and enjoy the game.
At our allotted time, we set our virtual Zoom sails and headed for King’s Landing ready to help Sir Dontos find the wildfire and save King’s Landing!
CONCEPT/EXECUTION
Sometimes online games ignore the ‘how’ about why you’re controlling an avatar in a room, but Puzzle Punks very much made it part of the story. We’ve taken a magic potion and can now control Sir Dontos telepathically, easy enough, there’s the backstory.
Before you start your mission you need to decide who will be your inventory master. This person will be responsible for adding all items to your inventory, it’s not a hard job, but it’s an important one. Everyone can view the inventory, but only one person can add them, although it is worth noting that anyone on the team can remove the items, even accidentally (thanks Amy!).
Even though this game doesn’t take place in a massive space, we found plenty to keep us occupied and as a team of rather experienced escapers it still kept us busy for nearly 45 mins, which when you consider that this is a fully hosted live avatar game for €50 (at time of writing), it is pretty good value for money.
The inventory system that Puzzle Punks use is very detailed and combines 360 views with a simple point-and-click method for getting detailed close ups of items in the room. If there is something in the room that is important then you will be able to get a close up of it right away. Equally, if you discover something in the room, Sir Dontos will give you a four character code that your inventory master can enter so your whole team can get a close up.
We didn’t actually appreciate it at the time but we can’t recall any modern padlocks in this room, any codes we found were entered in handmade locks and any keys felt like they could also be authentic. It’s a small thing but considering this game is set in the Game of Thrones world it would have been a bit odd to see a shiny and modern four digit number lock. Even the way the air conditioning unit was disguised managed to give us a laugh.
PUZZLES
A lot of the puzzles in Save King’s Landing were tactile and physical interactions with the room resulted in you being able to progress through it. The puzzles themselves were of a good mix, observation, pattern recognition, word play and a bit of logic. We didn’t find anything too challenging but all were enjoyable. One puzzle in particular that was a multistep puzzle stands out as a particular favourite.
GM/CLUE SYSTEM
Our avatar, Sir Dontos played his role of the fool perfectly. There is a fine balance in hosting a live avatar game from giving too much help to giving not enough, and Sir Dontos got it spot on. At no point did we feel we were being overly guided to anything particular in the room, and if we did need a little time to work something out, he waited for us rather than trying to push us along.
FINAL THOUGHTS
With the 360 view, the inventory, and Sir Dontos, we had everything we needed to have an enjoyable stay in King’s Landing and came away from this game with that wonderful escape room buzz.
You don’t need to know anything about Game of Thrones to enjoy this game, obviously if you do enjoy GoT then you may get a little more out of it, but however you look at it, this is a fun game.
GOOD TO KNOW
- Number of connections: 6 connections
- Price: €50 (flat fee)
- Devices: Computer recommended
- Platform: Zoom / Browser
- Inventory: Yes
- 360º View: Yes
- Time Zone: Dubrovnik, Croatia (CET)
Final Rating:
| Puzzles | |
| Concept/Execution | |
| GM/Clue System | |
| Value for Money | |
| Enjoyment |
Team: 4 players
Time Taken: 44 minutes
Website: https://puzzlepunks.com
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