Room Escape Artist

Mor dragons?

Location:  Saint-Jérôme, Québec, Canada

Date Played: May 5, 2023

Team size: 3-8; we recommend 3-4

Duration: 60 minutes

Price: $32.62 CAD per player (adult)

Ticketing: Private

Accessibility Consideration: At least one player will need to crouch or crawl. At least one player will need to climb stairs.

Emergency Exit Rating: [A+] No Lock

Physical Restraints: [A+] No Physical Restraints

REA Reaction

Mor Drakkar was a traditional escape room in a market where many of the games have pushed boundaries in different directions. It stayed true to the escape room roots, with puzzle-forward gameplay at the heart of the experience.

Mor Drakkar did a good job presenting a variety of puzzle types, challenges, and ways of interacting with the environments.

With some of the more complex puzzles, there was a bit of missing clue structure or missing affordances like lighting and surfaces.

More than anything, as a traveler to Montreal there’s this growing expectation of payoff against big themes. Mor Drakkar didn’t have that. In another city, this game would land differently, but here it’s easily overshadowed. However, if you’re looking for a traditional escape room experience and you don’t want all of the excess this region is known for, this is the perfect game to choose.

Who is this for?

• Puzzle lovers
• Fantasy fans
• Any experience level

Why play?

• Puzzle and interaction variety
• Collaborative puzzles

Story

In this fairy tale, we were the knights, coming to recover the dragon egg that the King had seized and hidden in a faraway tower. The mother dragon was ravaging the Kingdom searching for this egg, burning down everything in her path. We needed to act quickly before she reached the tower.

Setting

We entered the courtyard outside the tower. With walls of stone and dark wooden doors and mechanisms, the setting was appropriately fairy tale-esque. It felt homemade, but crafted with a care. From there, we progressed through the tower toward the dragon’s egg. The later sets evoked the same rustic (with only small touches of opulence) storybook look.

Gameplay

SOS Adventures’ Mor Drakkar was a standard escape room with a moderate level of difficulty.

Core gameplay revolved around searching, observing, making connections, and solving puzzles.

Analysis

➕ We began Mor Drakkar outside of the tower. We appreciated the contrasting environment for the first act, and the use of different materials to set us in a fairytale world.

➖ The gameplay in Mor Drakkar lacked a clear starting place. The most obvious early interaction didn’t have a necessary indicator, and the janky mechanism left us spinning our wheels.

➕ The second act flowed especially well, with each puzzle revealing new information, as we worked to reach the dragon’s egg. Furthermore, the set design with just a few stairs enhanced the space and nodded to the tower setting without creating onerous gameplay.

➖ In the second act, one puzzle required substantial reading. Without a writing surface, we had to devise our own system for organizing information using other props within the room. This wasn’t a fun environment for this type of nuanced puzzle.

➖ There was opportunity for better spotlighting. In once instance, we struggled to differentiate between colors.

➕ We appreciated one puzzle that SOS Adventures had pulled and pushed in their own unusual direction.

➕ /➖ We enjoyed one late game puzzle that required physical manipulation of chunky props. However, it included misdirection (presumably because the original was too easy) that made it unnecessarily complicated and detracted from the visual appeal of the solution.

➖ The final interaction was a letdown. Given our mission goals and the tool in hand, we misinterpreted the required action. We spent too long hooked on our interpretation, rather than pushing our way to victory.

➕ SOS Adventures’ Saint-Jérôme location was delightful, from the welcoming interaction through to the large, thematic waiting areas.

Tips For Visiting

• The location is at the back corner of the mall. You enter from the parking lot, not from inside the mall.
• This game is entirely bilingual (French and English).

Book your hour with SOS Adventures’ Mor Drakkar, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: SOS Adventures comped our tickets for this game.