Room Escape Artist

Madness is a real-life escape room livestreamed and played through an avatar, created by Exit The Room.

Format

Style of Play: real-life escape room livestreamed and played through an avatar

Required Equipment: computer with internet connection

Recommended Team Size: 2-4

Play Time: 60 minutes

Price: $141 per team

Booking: book online for a specific time slot

Description

This is a standard avatar adaptation of a real-life room where players view a shared video feed and give instructions to an avatar.

Hivemind Review Scale

Brett Kuehner’s Reaction

• + Enthusiastic and energetic gamemaster, despite it being 4am their time
• + Sets were functional, though not spectacular
• + Inventory system worked well
• – Puzzles were fairly generic
• – Puzzles lacked connection to locks, so numbers had to be tried in multiple locks
• + Many props were attractive and came across well on camera
• – Tech problem on one puzzle, but gamemaster was able to work around it quickly
• – Not great for larger teams, so cost per person is likely to be high

Cara Mandel’s Reaction

I’ll start by saying that I appreciated our game avatar’s enthusiasm. I could tell they were trying very hard to provide us with an enjoyable experience. I also truly appreciated them running a game for a US time zone-based team. I believe it was 4am for the gamemaster. Unfortunately, this game fell a bit flat for me overall. The story was pretty thin and I wasn’t entirely sure what the premise was supposed to be. I know it had something to do with a doctor who was up to no good. I felt the puzzles were pretty lacking and there was an overabundance of 3-digit and 4-digit padlocks. This certainly wasn’t my least favorite remote escape game, but I can’t say that I’d recommend it with so many other stronger options currently available.

Matthew Stein’s Reaction

Madness nearly drove me to madness with its mundanity. In a style typical of Central/ Eastern Europe circa 2015, this game consists of a slew of random, generic puzzles which have been somewhat haphazardly thrown into a loosely themed, secondhand store-decorated room. Our gamemaster’s eager attempt at a helpless avatar character didn’t particularly contribute to the remote game experience, though major kudos to him for being up at 4am his time to run the game at a US-friendly time!!

Theresa W’s Reaction

I have to give major props to Exit the Room: they have US-friendly bookings, even though they’re across the globe and are gamemastering at 4am. Beyond this, the game really fell flat in every sense. The story didn’t seem to make sense — we were out drinking with our professor, and ended up in a psych ward? The puzzles made sense, and the solutions were clear, yet there were multiple places to input the same code.

Disclosure: Exit the Room provided the Hivemind reviewers with a complimentary play.