A hidden gem in the Valleys
Embark on an exhilarating adventure as you assume the role of intrepid explorers on a mission to recover HMS Dolphin. This majestic vessel, adrift in the mysterious waters of the Celtic Sea, holds secrets waiting to be unveiled. Your challenge is to unravel the mysteries behind its abandonment, decipher intricate codes, and solve the puzzles, all while endeavouring to breathe life back into its dormant engines.
It feels like a lifetime ago when I used to spend my days in the Welsh valleys. I was there for university and lived in Treforest, which is perhaps a 10 minute drive from Taff’s Well where Puzzled is located. It’s probably a good thing that escape rooms weren’t really a thing when I was at uni or I probably wouldn’t have spent much time studying!
Puzzled are in a bit of an odd venue as it feels like when you’re arriving that it’s an office block rather than the location for an escape room. It makes a bit more sense when you know the backstory of Puzzled though. They run an IT company from the upstairs, so the whole building is theirs and as they had some space on the ground floor they decided to build an escape room (another one is under construction).
First impressions of Puzzled weren’t great, there was no real sitting/waiting area and it felt very much like an office building inside. Fortunately, it’s because they’ve decided to spend all their time on their actual room builds rather than on a fancy hallway – smart.
It’s worth pointing out that this game has been designed to be wheelchair accessible. There is one point where one person needs to be a little more agile, but wheelchair users wouldn’t be missing out on anything if they were to play.
After a brief chat with our host, Matt, it was time to get down to business. Matt gave us the health and safety and mission briefings in the hallway, then took our personal possessions into the room to lock them away for us. When he returned, it was our time to enter the room and prepare to abandon ship!
IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN
Now I must admit that I didn’t really know what to expect from Puzzled. Often when companies appear in small towns/villages their quality could be a little ‘lacking’, for lack of a better word. Puzzled were certainly not lacking in set design and atmosphere at all. You can tell that these guys normally work in IT as this was a very tech heavy room!
I’ve been on one or two doomed ships in my time playing escape rooms, and this was a decent representation (fortunately a very dry representation too). Ambient noises were being played at all times which helped to add to the immersion of the experience.
Another nice aspect of this game was the humour that was present. You’re able to interact with something in the room and there are apparently a lot of things you can do with it, it doesn’t always help progress your game, but it does add some more entertainment to it. An element of personalisation in the game experience was nice too, as was the little memento that we got to keep after the game.
PUZZLES
As I alluded to earlier, this is a very tech heavy game – and fortunately that tech all worked flawlessly. There were also a number of padlocks just to keep things interesting, but I don’t ever remember struggling to work out what code went with which padlock.
Many of the puzzles stayed close to the nautical theme, so you can probably imagine what they were, but there were also a few modern twists that while weren’t things we hadn’t seen before, still were good fun. The puzzles in generally involved; observation, searching, following instructions, decoding, reflexes/reaction, teamwork, and communication.
The puzzles were all fair and generally enjoyable to solve. We only really encountered two issues; one was simply because we didn’t realise we could interact with something so we left it alone for far too long. The other was a very frustrating search fail, I understand that a number of people don’t find this item and it felt a little unfair as that wasn’t really much to guide us to find it.
GM/CLUE SYSTEM
Clues, like the puzzles, felt nicely integrated in the theme and actually came through the radar screen that was in the game. I believe we needed maybe one or two hints for this game as we couldn’t find one item, and didn’t know we could use another (whoops). When we needed this help, it came through quickly and was enough to get us back on schedule.
I previously mentioned it, but the personalisation was a nice touch. It’s nice when companies can find a way to do this as it makes the experience just a little bit more special.
ANYTHING ELSE
I think Puzzled could be a little hidden gem in the Valleys. We’ll certainly be keeping an eye out and are looking forward to going back to play their new games when they open.
On a side note. Puzzled used to have an amazing website that was one of the coolest I had seen. Apparently it wasn’t great for the whole ‘user journey’ thing so they rebuilt it to make it more conventional, it works, but it lost the awe of their old site.
Success/Failure
Final Rating:
| Operation | |
| Puzzles | |
| Room Design | |
| GM/Clues | |
| Excitement |
Team: 2 players – escaped in 38 mins
Address: Ashwood House, 66 Cardiff Rd, Glan-y-llyn, Cardiff CF15 7QE
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