A very different offering from other Trapp’d games
In 1950, on our home soil, a destructive chemical called Venomous Agent X (VX) was created to wipe out millions of lives and was soon to be used in wars from 1950 to 1988. Up until 1993, when the Chemical Weapons Convention banned the chemical for heinous activities. Although the horrific chemical managed to slip through the cracks of society…
It’s time to shut down the operation. This is the last chance for International peace so it’s down to you and your squad to retrieve VX 2.0 from the underground facility, and return it to the UK for disposal. You have 60 minutes until Vadik Novikoff returns with his troops and subverts the mission. Be quick and think fast, the fate of the world is in your hands…
Sometimes the worst thing that can happen to a room happens before you even get in it: hype. Prior to heading to Kettering all we’d been hearing about was how great VX 2.0 was and that it was something very very different. So before we’d arrived this room was building up to be something epic to rival the very best, did it? Well, we’ll come to that…
We’d just completed the horror room, ‘Abigail’ so we were looking forward to something a bit brighter and more light hearted, so VX 2.0 very much fitted that bill. Our GM collected us from reception and took us upstairs to outside the room, it was here that he gave us the room briefing and explained our mission; basically we had to retrieve the VX 2.0 and escape with it within 60 minutes, easy!
PUZZLES
The room starts off much like any other traditional room with some nice little ‘warm-up’ puzzles, but once you get into the room proper everything changes. There was a good mix of puzzles in VX 2.0, a tiny amount of searching, and then a fair amount of logic and reasoning puzzles. In order to solve one puzzle you needed a decent amount of manual dexterity (I failed at that miserably, so Liz took over) and then another required good communication.
The puzzles all fitted into the theme, albeit loosely at times, and most of them relied on technology to trigger something happening; there were a few padlocks thrown in for good measure. We would assume that the main puzzle of this room (which was pretty unique, so credit there) was most likely triggered by the GM pushing a button – which is fine and you can extend an element of disbelief here. One puzzle felt a bit like a trial and error type of thing and to us it felt like it really slowed down the pace of the game and really just got a bit frustrating.
IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN
I think from all the hype I was expecting to walk into a room and be wowed, but really this room was more sparse than anything else. The wow factor they were going for here was the puzzles and how you interacted with the room.
If it wasn’t for the GM telling us off for not being as delicate as he would have liked with a piece of equipment then it probably would have been pretty immersive. I feel like if a piece of gear is the delicate then it probably should be redesigned and replaced with something a bit stronger. As it was part of it was already broken and out of action when we did the room so I don’t imagine the other bits will last too much longer. The puzzle that used this equipment was quite a slow burn and it is possible to not be able to complete it, but it looks like they have a work-around just in case which is always nice to see.
GM/CLUE SYSTEM
Clues were delivered over a speaker system but there was also a secondary system for delivery using a phone, it worked well and fitted with the theme. Like the other rooms at Trapp’d there was no visible timer in the room.
The introduction our GM gave us was enthusiastic and he was keen, however when we were in the room there was one puzzle which was obviously a bit delicate and he repeatedly kept chirping in over the intercom to stop doing what we were doing – unfortunately this is one of those pieces of equipment that is hard to get right. If equipment is that delicate it probably shouldn’t be in the room, and any sense of immersion was instantly lost by these interruptions. He gave timely clues so that was something.
ANYTHING ELSE
You’ve got to give Trapp’d credit for what they’ve done with this room. They’ve tried to do something different, and they have. If it wasn’t for a jumpy GM we’d have probably enjoyed this room more than we did.
Success / Failure
Final Rating:
Operation Puzzles Room Design GM/Clues Excitement
Team: 2 players – escaped in 36:01
Address: 143 Regent St, Kettering NN16 8QQ
Website: https://trappd.com
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