Trapp’d: The End of the Line (Northampton)

This game had potential

As the sun slowly begins to vanish behind the mountains, it was the perfect cloudless Summers night. The perfect night to execute the perfect heist. The heist to top them all. Seven months of assembling the finest team of criminal masterminds. 213 days of meticulous planning and precision detailing. Nothing has been left to chance. Every laborious angle has been covered.

The brief is exquisite in it’s simplicity. Hijack the train at Maricopa Station and bring to a halt whilst going through the ten mile stretch at Ropers tunnel.

Can you make the history books and pull off the greatest train robbery of all time

We never seem to have much luck with Trapp’d. Once we tried to play and the venue got flooded (a different venue to this one), and another time when we tried to play The End of the Line and The Temple of Yumiko there were electrical problems so we couldn’t play. So we were very much hoping that this time would be different as we had made a special trip to Northampton just to play these games.

Signs were more promising this time as we arrived at our allotted time and the games hadn’t been cancelled. Although the doorbell we rang to be let in the building didn’t seem to be working so we spent 10 minutes outside wondering if the games were in fact going to happen. Eventually the door opened and we were in, game time!

The End of the Line was actually the second game we played at Trapp’d on this day, having just played The Temple of Yumiko. As usual, we didn’t actually know much about this game, other than it involved a train.

Our GM for this game was Katee. Katee gave the health and safety and mission briefings in the reception area, but there was an issue. Something in the room wasn’t working so the two GMs were rushing around, making phone calls to try and get it sorted. Eventually they admitted defeat and said they couldn’t get this thing working, but as it was only for the aesthetic of the game, it didn’t really matter to us – these things happen. So knowing that the game wouldn’t be quite as complete, we were finally ready to get in and complete the greatest train robbery of all time!

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

The set design in The End of the Line was fine and they had some nice touches that helped it feel like we were on a moving train. But unfortunately this game felt really run down and in places seems to be falling apart, which was interesting as I don’t think it was a particularly old game.

We have had some good experiences with Trapp’d games. They’re rarely anything special but they’re normally fun and often value for money (especially if you get one of their 50% off deals). This was not one of those good experiences though. Other than being run down, we encountered a lot of technical issues that massively affected our enjoyment of the game.

It seemed like there were some things in the game that were manually triggered by the GM, but one of the things that wasn’t was the thing that was broken. We spent a good number of minutes trying to solve the puzzle only for the GM to eventually twig that it was broken. This meant she came in and just gave us the code as she couldn’t get it to work.

PUZZLES

The End of the Line was a mostly linear game with only one or two puzzles that felt like they could be solved in any order. Strangely there were items we found that felt like they should be puzzles but we didn’t actually do anything with them and at times the puzzle design felt a little lazy when they could have been so much more. Signposting was also lacking and we often found ourselves thinking ‘now what?’.

The puzzles involved: searching, observation, pattern recognition, audio, skill and some light maths/logic. There was some tech but mostly the puzzles resulted in combinations for padlocks.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

I felt bad for Katee, she was trying her hardest to give us a great experience, but the game just wasn’t playing ball. If we needed clues they would come over the tannoy system as and when needed/requested. There were also nudges/story prompts which would come from the ‘Big Boss’ using the phone in the room.

ANYTHING ELSE

We’d not had the best luck at this venue, and this game didn’t feel like the best that Trapp’d have to offer. It was worn down and looked very tired in places, and some major tech failures didn’t help us to have the best experience.

Success/Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 2 players – escaped in 32:30

Address: 24 Connaught Street, Northampton, NN1 3BP

Website: https://trappd.com