Way Out: Ice Tiki (Athens)

100% Pure Fun

The story starts after a huge explosion in one of the islands of Hawai, and places the player on a sinking ship near the Arctic.

Ice Tiki is an exploration ship that has searched for valuable treasures, such as the Hawaiian Tiki. Tiki are wooden statuettes of great value that are rumored to have various elemental powers. Also they are the protectors and saviors of Hawaii. So, your mission is to find them and return them to the right hands.

​Ice Tiki was the last game we played in Athens and was the one I had been looking forward to the most. We had a good week in the city where we played some truly world class escape rooms with our friends James and Charlie (from Deadlocked), but most of those games were horror themed so I was really looking forward to something a bit more light hearted.

I’m not sure if this company is named ‘Way Out’ because they are further out of the city than most, or because their concepts/themes are just way out – but either statement would be true. We actually played this game on the way to the airport and that worked out really well for us and was the perfect end to a wonderful week.

When we arrived we were greeted by the owner who was also our GM (I have forgotten his name), and his wonderful dog, Marley – it says a lot that we remember the dogs name but not the owners, whoops! Anyway, he (the owner, not the dog) offered us water and we sat and chatted in the outdoor waiting area for a little while. We then proceeded to move to the indoor waiting area where we could stash our belongings and then get down to business.

The health and safety briefing, and then the mission briefing both took place in this very comfortable waiting area. With that out of the way it was finally time to remove our shoes (yes, only socks allowed on your feet for this game) and enter the world of Ice Tiki!

I must admit, the blurb on the Way Out website explains this room perfectly in just one sentence…

“The adventure you will experience is a long and challenging one, but we make sure you have a lot of fun and enjoy yourselves in our wondrous script. Enjoy!”

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

As soon as you get in this room you understand why you need to take off your shoes, and strangely it actually adds to the experience. First things first though, this is not a game for anyone who is lacking mobility as you will be all over the place and this is an incredibly physical game with sliding, crawling, climbing, and generally just a lot of physical exertion – we certainly built up a sweat!

This is a very light hearted game and I would guess it was designed to simply provide players with a feeling of immense fun. Lighting was perfectly fine so we could see everything we needed to, and at times the lighting changed to provide almost like a party atmosphere. Actually, the whole experience felt like one big party!

I loved the sense of adventure in this game, and the extremely unique design and layout. We thought we had seen everything in Ice Tiki but then it just kept going and kept finding ways to push us and to ramp up the fun even more. I’d love to describe the game in more detail but really that would take away from the excitement of finding it for yourself. This game is perfect and must be experienced if you’re in Athens

PUZZLES

For the most part this game was quite linear and one puzzle would lead on to the next, but even in a team of four there was so much going on that no-one felt left out or at a loss for what to do next – it was kinda like an adventure playground and an escape room had a baby, even if you weren’t solving a puzzle you were having a great time just being in the space. Saying that, there were times where puzzles could be solved simultaneously if you wanted to split up and work on different things.

There was an underlying narrative which was there throughout the game, I wouldn’t say it was really driving the game forward but there was just enough story there to make the tasks contained within the game make sense. The puzzles were fair, thematic, and perfectly signposted.

The puzzles involved; searching, observation, audio, wordplay, following directions, and a lot of physicality. A nice touch was that the music often changed when we were solving puzzles and there were additional noises that celebrated when we got them correct or booed us if we got them wrong – nice gentle reinforcement like this meant that we never questioned if we were on the right path or not.

There was no sneaking searching in Ice Tiki but at times some of the set design did make it harder to find things, but if you knew where to look, there was always something useful in the room to make sure you didn’t miss anything vital.

In general we loved all the puzzles in this game and moving between them was a true delight. That is except for one puzzle. There was one puzzle that involved sound that brought us grinding to a halt and kinda killed the buzz a little as only one person on the team could really be working on it at a time. Fortunately it didn’t last too long and when that was done we were straight back to the party.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

I love when a clue system is integrated into the game in a way that it feels like it belongs, and Ice Tiki had one of the most innovative clue systems that I have ever seen in a game. At first I didn’t even realise we were getting assistance, it just felt like part of the game. Clues were visual, for the most part, but if needed they could be written instead. Well done to Way Out, this was a great clue system!

I believe we may have got a little assistance here and there but the only point where we definitely needed help was when there was a minor tech fail early on that scuppered our progress. Thankfully our GM was watching closely and when he realised the tech had failed he provided a small workaround that solved the problem and impressively didn’t break with the immersion at all.

ANYTHING ELSE

I would love to play Ice Tiki again, even though we know how to solve the puzzles, the experience was just amazing. The time we spent in this game was like one big party and it was the perfect end to our holiday. Please please please can we get more games like this in the world!

Success / Failure

Final Rating:

Team:  Team of 4 – enjoyed the room for 1hr 8mins

Address: Trias 61, Vrilissia 152 35

Website: https://www.wayoutescaperooms.gr/