An interesting plot
In a post apocalyptic world, the human race is on the brink of extinction. The few remaining survivors work together in the struggle to survive.
But one man had control over the population after he addicted everyone to a powerful new drug which only he can supply. Without the drug people will die.
When the evil man is hunted down and killed, it is a race against time to find the formula for the drug before it is too late.
You only have 60 minutes to find the formula in the old hospital, but be careful the madman who lived and worked there surely won’t have made it easy to find.
Our final game of the day (and on the island) was The Old Hospital Room. We’d just completed the other three games at Random-Rooms, The Random Room, The Cell, and The Dragon Room, so it was finally time to complete the set.
I must admit, the story for this game was quite odd and I couldn’t tell if we were good guys or not, basically an evil person got the world addicted to a drug, he then got killed and we had to make more of the drug – not sure why we couldn’t just make the cure? Perhaps that’s lined up for a future game…
Anyway, ignoring the story for a moment. We took some time in reception before our final game to use the facilities and give Alex (our host) time to get the room ready. Once we were ready to rock, we had another very lengthy health and safety briefing before entering the corridor of doors again, only this time, we turned left to enter The Old Hospital.
Covid-19 Precautions: We were the only team on site. We wore masks in the common areas but were able to remove them in the game.
IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN
This game certainly felt out of place with the other offerings at Random-Rooms and was certainly the least family friendly game. The theming was very dark, verging on ‘horror’, but there were no live actors so even those of a nervous disposition should be ok.
Another noticeable change to this game, other than the dark theme, was that there were also atmospheric noises playing. I don’t mind a quiet room, but I always feel like a soundtrack of sorts just adds something to the immersion and feeling in an escape room.
Again, this was another game where everything was on show from the moment you entered, but it felt like they had used the space better and managed to keep things interesting. The space was much tighter than the other rooms though, and as a team of five we found we were getting in each other’s way quite a bit.
PUZZLES
There was quite a mix of puzzles in this game, and we found that there was something for everyone on our team. I’ve got to be honest, as this game was quite non-linear I missed half of what was going on while I worked on other stuff. Generally though, there was some searching, observation, logic, pattern recognition etc…
A lot of the puzzles resulted in combinations for padlocks but there was some tech to help you reach the solution.
One particular puzzle caused us a lot of problems as it felt like a bit of a red herring and also was available long before we could actually solve it. We spent a long time trying to solve this, only to find out that this part of the game was quite linear and it needed to be one of the last things to be completed. A little bit of extra signposting here, or just a tweak to the puzzle would have saved a lot of frustration. Even when we did have everything we needed, it felt like quite a leap to get to the solution.
GM/CLUE SYSTEM
Alex did a good job as our gamesmaster and was on call for when we needed help. If I remember correctly we needed one clue for this game, and this was for that puzzle that wasn’t actually available to solve when we thought it was. When we did need to ask for help, Alex chimed in quickly and got us back on track.
The clues were delivered via a TV screen in the room, much like their other games, and this screen also displayed our countdown timer.
ANYTHING ELSE
We hoped to finish on a high at Random-Rooms, but I think The Old Hospital was our least favourite game of the day. One puzzle just felt like a massive leap and that caused us to end the game with more frustration than fun.
Success / Failure
Final Rating:
Operation | |
Puzzles | |
Room Design | |
GM/Clues | |
Excitement |
Team: 5 players – escaped in 38:43
Address: 5 Chain Ln, Newport PO30 5QA
Website: https://www.random-rooms.co.uk/
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