Room Escape Artist

Atheria is a remote team building experience through gameplay, designed for corporate groups, and created by Amplio Games.

Format

Style of Play:

• Point-and-click

Who is it For?

This game was specifically crafted to target corporate team building groups. It was designed to challenge their communication and problem solving skills. It offers a novice puzzle level. It would be best for teams of coworkers seeking feedback to improve the effectiveness of their communication.

Required Equipment: Computer with internet connection

Recommended Team Size: 4-6

Play Time: about 60 minutes

Price: This game retails at $150-$600, depending if the host does a live debrief or sends a website link following the experience.

Booking: contact Amplio Games to book

Description

One player “drives” the game via mouse and keyboard, sharing their screen and audio over Zoom. All the players work together to solve puzzles and make choices.

At the end of the game, there is either a live debrief or a link to a recap sent via email. Our team of Hivemind reviewers received both.

Kurtis Rohlf’s Reaction

Atheria was a web-based team building game meant to test and measure communication and problem solving for corporate groups. We received an email from a “co-worker” who had been sucked into an alternate dimension. She requested our help to guide her through the realm of Atheria and travel back through the portal before it closed. This was the second team building game I have played from Amplio Games, the first being Thunder Roost, which we reviewed previously. In general, I enjoyed Atheria. The puzzles were easy to medium difficulty and the interactions with your coworker were cheeky and added levity to the game. While I would not recommend this game for puzzle enthusiasts, Atheria was an approachable foray into puzzling to provide a unique challenge and a good team building activity for a group of coworkers.

Theresa Piazza’s Reaction

This isn’t a game I’d choose to play on my own – but as I understand it, that’s not the creator’s intent. Billed as a corporate team building intended to help you learn about the personalities of your coworkers, the game was designed so that one person has all the interactions (clicks on screen, enters answers) and the other members of the team are restricted to only providing verbal input and suggesting what the person driving does next. This transported me back to the avatar-gamemaster days of the early pandemic era, but instead of having a skilled gamemaster who knew the game inside and out, it was a randomly selected member of our team. For me, that meant this room was an exercise in restraint. I couldn’t click around to investigate what I thought was most interesting, we voted as a team and looked at one item or puzzle at a time. Thankfully I really enjoy hanging out with the people I played with, but overall I found this experience carried the energy of when you’re in a zoom meeting and you can’t get a word in edgewise.

Tammy McLeod’s Reaction

This team building experience is reminiscent of old school point-and-click video games, and consists of a series of escape-room style puzzles. By restricting the game interface to a single person, it forces the team to focus on effective verbal communication. My teammates and I were used to both taking the initiative in discussions, and listening to each other, and I didn’t find it restrictive not to be able to control the game at all. The difficulty level of the puzzles is fitting even for inexperienced players, and the puzzles are well suited for group solving. I enjoyed the collaborative process that was imposed, as we worked through them together. Receiving empirical feedback on our teamwork skills would certainly be the more uncommon, and more valuable aspect of this entire experience.

Brett Kuehner’s Reaction

• + The game is designed to require team-based thinking, with team members using different types of skills, which is good for learning how your team works together (or doesn’t work together)
• ? The interface was generally simple and easy to understand, but there were a couple of exceptions where the way to interact was not as clear
• +/- Several of the design choices were specifically intended to cause small amounts of confusion or frustration. This is less fun as a player, but potentially useful when looking for team behavioral analysis.
• +/- Most puzzles were on the easier side, but still enjoyable. However, it would have been better to have at least one puzzle that was a bit more challenging.
• + The story was not complex, but was sufficient to anchor the flow of the experience
• + Throughout the game all of the communication was with a fictional character that had a distinct (and funny) personality
• ? Amplio calls this game a “Team Performance Playground” and it is intentionally lighter weight in gameplay and analysis than the previously-reviewed Thunder Roost game, which is referred to as a “Team Performance Lab.” I found that the analysis in Thunder Roost was where I saw much of the value, because it gave actionable feedback on the team interactions. Although Atheria is less time-consuming and less expensive, I still found myself wishing for more detailed analysis.

Disclosure: Amplio provided the Hivemind reviewers with a complimentary play.