The Push Mystery Rooms: The Movies Experience (Bruges)

Leave reality, behind.

Welcome to the wonderful world of “The Movies”.

Whether you are a movie lover or not, this room is one you will not soon forget.

Leave your reality behind and enter a world of magic, fantasy, action and horror…

Of all the games on our Belgium/Netherlands road trip that I was looking forward to, I think The Movies Experience was probably top. This was one of those games that I knew nothing about, and all I had heard about it was very high praise from people in the industry who I know and respect.

It’s worth noting that with The Push Mystery Rooms, there are two experiences to choose from; The Movies Experience, and The Movies Lite. What’s the difference between these games? I gather the ‘Lite’ option is the less scary version. We played the full experience version, so this review is based on that – and if you can handle a little light horror, then you should DEFINITELY play that version.

We arrived in the area a little early, so after parking outside the venue we had time to grab a lovely meal in a nearby restaurant. We still had more time to kill so we had a quick exploration of the immediate area around the venue. Not at all related to escape rooms, but we found 24/7 vending machines just up the street that had household essentials like bread, milk, eggs and cheese – how cool is that?!

Anyway, after the excitement of the vending machines we returned to The Push Mystery Rooms, now at our allotted time and pressed the doorbell. The door buzzed open and we walked through a small courtyard and stood outside a very large and industrial looking set of roller doors. It was at this moment, where our cinematic experience began.

Have you ever played a room and the very first moment gives you goosebumps? That’s exactly what I experienced with The Movies Experience. Actually, that was before the experience even started. When we entered the venue proper, we were greeted by our host, Victor, and shown to the waiting room (Roxy Bar) – which felt like a cosy log cabin straight out of Center Parcs. It was in this space that we received the briefing and our entry ticket. With the ticket in hand, it was now time to enter… The Movies Experience.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

Many years ago and in a different life, I actually worked in a cinema. But I must say, the cinema we visited at The Push Mystery Rooms was much much nicer – there were certainly no larger cinema tubs with holes cut out of the bottom to clean up (if you know, you know).

As I said, I didn’t know what to expect from this experience, but one thing is for sure, it exceeded all expectations that I may or may not have had. The spaces we encountered were a delight (even the horror spaces) and it truly felt like an adventure, with the sounds (oh the sounds!), sights, and even smells making it feel like a truly immersive experience where we had entered the movies.

The interesting thing about The Movies Experience is that the owners are still not finished with it, and it sounds like they’re still tweaking and adding new ‘movies’ to it. Which is great, as this is a game that I would 100% play again. It had ALL the feels!

In terms of set design, I can’t fault this game, at all. I believe the owner, Anthony, is an interior designer and that explains a lot! Each set was beautiful, so make sure when you play you really look around, there is a lot to take in and not all of it is a puzzle, some of it is there just to delight and amaze you.

This game does mostly talk place all on one level, but some crawling/scooting/manoeuvring through small spaces is required at times, and we couldn’t see a work around for this.

PUZZLES

If you play The Movies Lite, then you’ll miss out on some horror aspects of the game, but if you play The Movies Experience then you get everything. Everything of course, means some added areas where the whole ‘family-friendly’ vibe takes a turn and suddenly not all of the movies are PG, in fact, they’re very much 18. Great if you’re a fan of horror games, or suffer from FOMO, but if you want to experience this with your kids, perhaps The Movies Lite experience is the one you should consider.

The main thing that The Movies Experience adds over The Movies Lite (as far as I’m aware) is some horror themed spaces, and some wonderful interaction with a live actor – which really did add a lot of fun.

For me, the star of the show in The Movies Experience was the set and it was a beautiful place to be, but it wouldn’t be an escape room without puzzles. The puzzles themselves were fun, engaging, and felt diagenic to the spaces that they were contained in; searching, observation, wordplay, logic, pattern recognition, basic maths, teamwork, and generally just following instructions.

There were a few padlocks dotted around, but also a fair amount of tech and things triggering automatically once we had completed a task/puzzle. At more than one point in this game there were also some very cool theatrics which was a lot of fun.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

The clues in The Movies Experience were delivered in two ways, either in text via a screen, or over a speaker system disguised as additional narrative – very clever. This ethereal voice was also occasionally interjecting narrative to explain the story and what we were doing.

I don’t recall needing much help in this game as everything made sense and flowed perfectly. But Victor was clearly keeping a close eye on our progress and was able to provide a thorough debriefing after the game, and was happy to walk us through anything that any of us may have missed in the game.

Not only was the briefing in the Roxy Bar lovely, and the game wonderful, but after the game we were shown to the Greenhouse which felt inspired by Harry Potter and was an homage to all of the favourite escape rooms of the owner. In this greenhouse we had a thorough debrief and chat with Victor, and received quite possibly the coolest memento from an escape room that we’ve ever received.

ANYTHING ELSE

The Movies Experience is one of those games that makes me realise that I need to re-think my Top 10, as this is definitely on it – and possibly at the top. From start to finish, I was in awe at what they have achieved with this game. Play it. Play it now.

Success / Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 4 players – 70 mins

Address: Damse Steenweg 28, 8380 Brugge, Belgium

Website: https://www.pushpushpush.be/