Room Escape Artist

This game and company have closed.

The Comedy of Terrors is a point-and-click adventure game created by Wild Hare Escapes.

Format

Style of Play: point-and-click hosted experience, not synced across player devices

Required Equipment: computer with internet connection

Recommended Team Size: 2-4

Play Time: 75 minutes

Price: $25 per player

Booking: book online for a specific time slot

Description

Using Zoom to communicate with your teammates and the gamemaster, The Comedy of Terrors functions similarly to a point-and-click adventure game made for any video gaming platform. You collect items that are automatically added to your inventory, and click and drag each item to another item in the space to use it. The interface is not synced across devices, so each teammate can simultaneously play locally, or one teammate can screenshare over Zoom for others to watch.

Hivemind Review Scale

Matthew Stein’s Reaction

The Comedy of Terrors has the potential to be a terrific game – it features loads of beautiful original artwork, versatile custom tech, and creative interactive elements – but due to some serious puzzle design flaws and an unpredictable navigation interface, I would not recommend playing it quite yet. I always struggle to write reviews for games that feel like they’ve prematurely launched. Even though we set a new record for the game, our playthrough was very choppy and honestly felt like an early stage playtest as we all verbalized the various ways in which puzzles had ambiguous cluing, misleading extra elements, or sub-elegant final steps. That said, most puzzles were thematically well integrated and used interesting mechanics. I really hope Wild Hare Escapes elicits and iterates on more critical playtester feedback to allow this game to reach its full potential.

Brett Kuehner’s Reaction

• + Highly influenced by classic point-and-click adventure games, with a fun sense of humor
• – Highly influenced by classic point-and-click adventure games, with too much “hunt the pixel” searching and some arbitrary puzzles
• – Several puzzles have insufficient cluing/ signposting and are in need of design improvements
• – Navigation sometimes depends on clicking small invisible areas and often does not relate clearly to the actual layout of the map
• – One puzzle requires outside knowledge
• – Audio effects have uneven volume levels, leading to unpleasantly loud sounds at times
• + Graphics are attractive and suit the story tone

Relatively small fixes to the interface and puzzle design could result in a much better game. I encourage the designers to do more playtesting with both novice and experienced players, and to pay attention to areas where many groups get confused or are unsure how to proceed.

Theresa Piazza’s Reaction

The Comedy of Terrors is a point-and-click-style escape room video game combined with a live gamemaster (who, it seems, is required for narration and hinting). I appreciated the theatre theming that accompanied this game, but otherwise might have rather done without playing it. There are known rough edges within the gameplay that need to be smoothed out in order to command a $25 per person price point from a game that is otherwise structurally, a point-and-click escape room game for your mobile phone.

Theresa W’s Reaction

I would like to be very clear and up front — I cannot recommend this game in its current state although I do believe that Wild Hare Escapes can iterate on this experience to make it worthwhile. They have designed a point-and-click game that is challenging and fun, yet currently feels clunky and has some puzzle flaws that could be easily fixed. Unfortunately, our playthrough felt like an early playtest rather than a finished game, but the designer was taking notes on what to fix during our playthrough. The tone of the game was great and the bits of humor throughout make the game charming. Navigating through the space was a real nightmare and none of our players were strangers to the gameplay style. With a bit of tweaking on the navigation and cluing, this could really be a great experience.

Disclosure: Wild Hare Escapes provided the Hivemind reviewers with a complimentary play.