Trapped Escape Rooms: Spirit Train (Play at Home)

Low on puzzles, high on story

Assigned another dull work trip, you pack your luggage and head to the train station. But when you’re whisked away to the fantastical spirit world, your destination becomes less certain. Will you find your way home?

Join Trapped Puzzle Rooms in their first ever Premium Audio Escape Adventure, a two-hour narrative puzzling experience. Take a break from the monotony of the waking world and experience a journey full of magic and whimsy. All aboard the Spirit Train!

We haven’t really played many experiences that are classed as an ‘audio escape adventure’, perhaps a few fit that description but they were certainly nothing like Spirit Train which really is an audio heavy experience. We were invited along to play this game by our friend Matt from EscapeMattster and of course we had to say yes, if for no other reason than to see what a ‘premium audio escape adventure’ actually was.

Unlike many escape rooms, Spirit Train takes place using Discord (the discord app works better than the browser version). Fortunately, we’ve been tinkering around with Discord more and more, so where-as in the past this may have been an issue, for once we were ready to go. So at our allotted time, we joined the Discord channel where we met Matt and our host Mark.

CONCEPT/EXECUTION

If you’re looking for a puzzle heavy experience,, then this is definitely not the game for you. We found that it can probably best be compared to a game of Dungeons and Dragons, where your surroundings are described to you and you have to choose how to react. The Discord channel is used as a platform for the audio interactions, but also so images can be displayed.

As far as audio experiences go, it was pretty decent. Mark did a good job of being enthusiastic with his narration and even threw in a few voices when speaking for in game characters which helped to keep the game interesting.

As an escape room experience it was rather lacking. We felt there weren’t that many puzzles and the ones we did encounter were few and far between. If you’re a fan of audio led experiences like Dungeons and Dragons, then this would probably be right up your street, but if you want purely puzzling, you’ll be disappointed.

The artwork which appeared at various points throughout the game was very well done and helped to build the mental picture of what we were ‘seeing’. Overall it had a very Studio Ghibli vibe about it.

PUZZLES

This could be the shortest puzzle section we’ve ever written as there really weren’t many. I’d say there were maybe a handful of puzzles that really felt like they would be in an escape room, and of that, only one felt particularly satisfying to solve – it was pretty clever and also fitted in the theme perfectly.

Stepping aside from the traditional escape room puzzles, Spirit Train is designed to get you to use your imagination and think outside of the box to solve the puzzles that are, for the most part, described to you. So you’ll find some logic, and then more logic, and then you’ll need to really be able to picture scenes and think about creative uses for what you have ‘found’.

CLUE SYSTEM

I think in the clue system we should probably talk about our host, Mark. Mark felt like a true entertainer and was obviously very comfortable narrating our story, I really couldn’t find any way to fault his performance.

We didn’t outwardly ask for any clues, but as the game is audio-led, your narrator is in the perfect position to just drop in extra bits of information, or tweak the story to make sure you recall an item you found or a person you met.

The one criticism we had during our game is that one section felt like it went on for far too long and we were starting to lose interest. We weren’t sure what we needed to do, we tried everything we could think of and still nothing worked, yet it just went on and on. It would have been nice if Mark had interjected sooner with something useful to help us get over this stumbling block. All we could think is that we were making good time through the game so he allowed us to falter a bit just to slow us down, perhaps.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Puzzle enthusiasts will not enjoy this game, but those who like to get immersed in a story certainly will. With beautiful artwork and great narration, this is likely a game for those who enjoy experiences similar to Dungeons and Dragons.

GOOD TO KNOW

• Number of connections: 3-8 Players
• Price: $28 per ticket (3 player minimum)
• Devices: Desktop/Laptop
• Platform: Discord
• Inventory: No
• 360º View: No
• Time Zone: CDT (Minneapolis, USA)

Final Rating:

Team: 3 players

Time Taken: 90 minutes (approx)

Website: https://www.trappedpuzzlerooms.com