“I wanna be the very best”
You’re on your way to an open house at a rustic country cottage. You’re expecting an idyllic retreat, but arrive to find the house in shambles. You can’t help having have a look downstairs…but then you hear the door lock behind you. There’s an elevator with a keypad, but you don’t know the code. To find it, you must search for clues and solve puzzles, cracking other codes along the way.
I should probably caveat this review now and say that despite being listed on this site as a ‘live avatar’ room, it isn’t a traditional online escape room experience. The offerings by Roobicks are different and can probably best be described as corporate team building games, however, their games would also work well for friends or families who have a bit of a competitive streak in them.
We played this game as three teams of two and went head to head with fellow bloggers, ESCAPETHEROOMers and Escape Adventurer. I must admit that going into this game we really didn’t know what to expect, especially as we aren’t the most competitive of people. But by the end, we can certainly see the merits of this game style, and Roobicks seem to have it running smoothly.
The premise of this game is that we’re all stuck in a basement and the only way out is an elevator, but the twist is that only one team can escape – the first team to solve all the puzzles.
CONCEPT/EXECUTION
If I worked for a company that organised this game as a team-building exercise, I’d be very happy. All the teams met in the main meeting area where the rules were explained, and we were shown how to interact with the game, then we were put into breakout rooms so we could start the game, simultaneously.
To make it easier for our GM to see how we were getting on, we used the annotate function of Zoom. This meant we could doodle on the screen and show her that we were on the right track. This annotation function came in very handy for the last puzzle and made completing it much more straightforward.
The ending of the game was satisfactory as we didn’t really know who had won until we were all brought into the main meeting area again. As it turns out we came second, by a couple of minutes, but all of us finished very closely. As enthusiasts, it’s not surprising that we finished in around 30mins but corporate teams who are not used to this type of game would likely take closer to the hour.
PUZZLES
This game was rather light on puzzles, I think in total there were five of them. The puzzles we did encounter were good and fitted with the story. We struggled on the first puzzle as we were overcomplicating it massively, but once we got that out of the way we sped up and found our rhythm.
The puzzles in the basement were typical of an online escape room, with a fair amount of logic and deduction. Arguably one puzzle could need a little outside knowledge, but it’s pretty basic stuff so you should be ok.
We solved one puzzle but couldn’t follow through with the next step due to our location being the UK. We flagged this with Rachel and she immediately offered a workaround so we didn’t really lose much time at all and we were able to continue.
GM/CLUE SYSTEM
Normally when you play this game you will have one GM per team, but for our game we had one GM, Rachel, watching over all three teams. Somehow she did a good job of keeping us all going and monitoring our progress, so at no point did we feel like we were fighting to get her attention.
It’s all explained at the start, but if you need hints you will suffer a time penalty at the end. Rachel was listening in and could see us struggling on one puzzle so helpful asked if we needed a little nudge, and we did. The hints she gave were just cryptic enough to get us back on track without giving us the answer outright.
FINAL THOUGHTS
If you want to find out who has the best escape room team amongst your friends then this is the game for you! Well hosted, fun puzzles, and the competitive aspect adds something extra.
GOOD TO KNOW
- Number of connections: 12 players maximum
- Devices: Desktop/Laptop
- Platform: Zoom
- Inventory: No
- 360º View: No
- Time Zone: Las Vegas (PT)
Final Rating:
| Puzzles | |
| Concept/Execution | |
| GM/Clue System | |
| Value for Money | |
| Enjoyment |
Team: 6 players
Time Remaining: 30 minutes
Website: https://roobicks.com
*Disclaimer: we weren’t charged for this experience, but this has not influenced our review.
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