Random-Rooms: The Random Room (Newport)

100% Random

Sometimes things just don’t make sense….sometimes things are not what they appear…somethings just don’t fit the mould!

There is no story or background information to guide you…you have just a single imperative goal; – ESCAPE!

You have 60 minutes to ‘Find an Escape’ in this room of mind-bending puzzles, mysteries, riddles, and more!

There’s not a lot to do on the Isle of Wight in the off-season so we decided to get booked in and play all four games at Random-Rooms in Newport. We didn’t know much about any of the games on the island as it doesn’t seem like many enthusiasts make it over to play, but we thought we’d take a punt and give them a try.

First impressions were certainly good. As we entered the building and walked into the reception area we were greeted by our host/gm/owner Alex, and also a nice message on the TV screen welcoming us by our team name – it’s always nice to feel welcomed! The reception was comfortable enough, with play-at-home escape games and drinks available to purchase, plus a toilet should it be needed.

It’s quite unusual nowadays to play a game that has no story at all, well The Random Room is one of those games. The idea behind this game is to literally find a way to escape, that’s it. Because of the lack of story there wasn’t really a briefing on that, but we did receive a very long and detailed health and safety briefing. Oh, I tell a lie, there was a little bit of a briefing about the game, we were told that some things that were in there were simply there to throw us off, so don’t think that everything in the game is useful. Interesting. With that ringing in our mind, we entered The Random Room.

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

I’m not really sure how to describe the room design of this game, so I’ll go with the only word that seems to fit, random. With no story there was nothing to explain where we were or why we were there, so I can’t say if the design was good or not. There was a lot of purple and due to some design choices it had a bit of a festive feel in places.

This wasn’t the most exciting of places to spend an hour (or 22 mins in our case), but it was fun. As promised before we went into the game, there were a few items that could be classed as red herrings. Fortunately there was nothing that stole our attention for too long and none of these red herrings caused us any frustration.

There were a lot of items in the room, some relevant, some not, but we were able to distinguish what was useful and what was just filler quite easily. At times the room felt like perhaps it was a child’s bedroom, at other times, it felt like perhaps a kitchen or living room, so I think we’ll just assume it was an amalgamation of lots of rooms into one.

If there was a downer for us with this game then I’d probably have to say it was the ending. I know we weren’t expecting anything too fancy or exciting, but the way we completed the game was just a bit anticlimactic. Also worth pointing out that the door we entered through was never locked, so we could leave at any time if needed.

PUZZLES

We played this game as an experienced team of five and completed it in 22 minutes so I’d say that this game was on the easier side. For the most part it was non-linear which suited our larger team as we could split up and work on things simultaneously, but there were points where we came back together to solve puzzles.

There was quite a varied number of puzzles (as you’d expect in a random room); searching, observation, following instructions, logic, some basic maths, and one puzzle that could probably be classed as physical. This was a very basic room with minimal use of technology and most puzzles resulted in codes or keys for padlocks.

Most of the puzzles felt like quite quick wins but there were at least two puzzles that slowed us down as they felt a bit ‘meatier’ and took longer to put together and solve.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

As we clicked with the randomness of this room we didn’t actually need any help. If we did need a clue then we simply needed to request it and then Alex would have typed it up onto the TV screen that was in the room. Seeing how attentive Alex was when we played his other games, I’m sure that if we did need a clue it would have come through quickly.

The TV screen was also used to display a countdown timer so we knew how long we had left to find our way to escape.

ANYTHING ELSE

This room certainly lived up to its name, it was very random. We clicked with the puzzles and found it to be an easy game, strangely it was probably the game we enjoyed the most at Random-Rooms.

Success / Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 5 players – escaped in 22:14

Address: 5 Chain Ln, Newport PO30 5QA

Website: https://www.random-rooms.co.uk/