Room Escape Artist

Uncle Artemis is a point-and-click game created by Enigma Escape Rooms Wakefield in Wakefield, England.

Format

Style of Play:

• Online native experience (can NOT be played IRL)
• Play on demand
• Web-based inventory system
• Point-and-click

Required Equipment: computer with internet connection, pen and paper

Recommended Team Size: 1-3

Play Time: 1-2 hours

Price: £20

Booking: purchase and play at your leisure

Description

It’s a point-and-click puzzle game in Telescape. You have a 360-degree room photo, items you can collect, and places to input your answers.

Hivemind Review Scale

Kate Wastl’s Reaction

This is a relatively straightforward experience that exposes players to a variety of puzzle types while uncovering late Uncle Artemis’ secrets in his private study. While revealing these mysteries, we encountered non-linear challenges that are fairly confidently laid out within the virtual space. Players that appreciate not wasting a large amount of the time searching will value that there is a progression tracker accompanied fairly readily by everything necessary to move forward.

The platform provides clear auditory feedback for successful puzzle completion and prevents players from wasting time by automatically tracking open clues. While the puzzles cover a diverse range of styles, two of the puzzles have a clear solution but a tedious execution, which might be frustrating to some players. This experience would be best enjoyed by teams of 2-3 people who have at minimum a beginner level of escape room and/or puzzling experience before sleuthing through this particular study.

Diana Kobrynowicz’s Reaction

This was an interesting take on the theme of your-favorite-eccentric-uncle-passes-on-and-you-inherit-the-key-to-his-study, where you begin to solve the mystery of his life’s work. This game can be played at any time, and it is housed in Telescape. This was my first experience playing in Telescape, so I have nothing to compare it to, but it seems to be a good use of this medium. The graphics were interesting and engaging. The searching was fun and provided a good representation of searching an actual room. There were interesting, unique, and theme-consistent puzzles. The hint system was well integrated and easy to use. My only true disappointment was that just as my team member and I started to play, I was hit with a major thunderstorm and was unable to connect, so I played the game solo. I enjoyed it, and imagine it would be even more fun with another person or two. I went back and forth on my rating, ultimately landing on, yeah, go ahead and play. I still find in-person escape rooms more fun than anything I’ve yet played online, but if I was itching to play a room and nothing in my area was available, I believe this game would scratch the itch. As I reread my review I see I used the word “interesting” 3 times, and that is a good label for my experience.

Joel Smileypeacefun Reaction

Uncle Artemis was a world traveler and his death came as a shock to his family. But there was his study full of artifacts waiting to be explored.

At its best, this is a puzzle-heavy game, which I liked. Multiple things were going on simultaneously, but it never got overwhelming. The main solution input machine was creative and fun to interact with. The game also had a nice puzzle variety.

At its worst, I accidentally skipped one or two puzzles or solved them without completely understanding what I had done (by no means did I try to brute-force the solutions). There was one reading puzzle that felt a tiny bit tedious. The game is light on story, which I didn’t mind as much since I played by myself. I’d have a hard time, however, justifying up to 6 players per team.

It’s a nice point-and-click Telescape game with a few unique mechanics. This one is definitely worth playing on a rainy evening when you don’t plan to go outside.