Krematorium Escape Rooms Experience - Malum [Review]

Malum is one of the best escape rooms in Barcelona. Here are our recommendations for other great escape rooms in Barcelona, Spain.

Don’t lose your head

Location: Barcelona, Spain

Date Played: April 23, 2024

Team size: 2-6; we recommend 3-5

Duration: 70 minutes

Price: €105 per team

Ticketing: Private

Accessibility Consideration: This game includes steps and at least one player will have to crawl. One player will be physically restrained.

Mess Meter: 🧹 (out of 5)

Emergency Exit Rating: [A+] No Lock

Physical Restraints: [F] No Emergency Release

For more on our trip to Spain, here’s our field report.

REA Reaction

Malum was terrifying, but also playful. It was demonic, mischievous, and also very metal.

Krematorium Escape Rooms Experience put a lot of emphasis on transition spaces. These were highly detailed and took up a lot of their real estate. This focus amped up our anticipation.

Malum controlled our movement through well-signed posted gameplay. We felt so clever each time we made a connection… only to realize that conclusion would lead us to traversing the large gamespace, or separating from each other. It was an artful design that pulled and pushed us into jump scares without chasing us.

The character haunting this game was impressive. They moved fluidly through the space, undetected, and they added a playful tone that we found quite compelling. When we heard a high-pitched voice later in the day, half our team jumped.

Where Malum fell short was the end game. It just sort of petered out. It didn’t give all that designed transition space a chance to be a part of a finale. The most exciting and impressive reveals came too early on.

Still, Malum is a must play for horror fans visiting Barcelona. It really was one of our favorite horror games of the trip. With a few refinements, it would be right up there as one of strongest escape games we played on our trip to Spain.

Who is this for?

Adventure seekers
Puzzle lovers
Scenery snobs
Horror fans
Any experience level

Why play?

The exquisite sign-posting
The gorgeous sets
The playful horror tone

Story

We entered the place of an ancient evil. We knew it would terrifying, and yet, we continued on inside.

Setting

Malum was dark and foreboding. A long corridor stretched in front of us, building apprehension. We made our way toward a humble home. The parlor was homey, but that was a facade, hiding the evil hidden in the depths of this place. The build was detailed throughout, especially in the transition spaces, which were elaborate.

Gameplay

Krematorium Escape Rooms Experience’s Malum was a standard, horror escape room.

The gameplay was not especially challenging, but if you are too terrified to explore, they gameplay will be much more difficult.

Core gameplay exploration, searching, and solving puzzles.

The gameplay also required us to move through back and forth through different spaces. On multiple occasions, the gameplay forced us to split the party.

Analysis

➕ Malum fits into the Spanish horror genre of “long hallway of apprehension.” Each time they built anticipation they delivered on the scare, but never how we were expecting it.

➕ Krematorium Escape Rooms commanded the lighting brilliantly. They directed us with the light. And they thrust us into darkness to scare us. It was well choreographed.

➕ A character haunted this space and the actor – who was also our gamemaster and hint system – moved stealthily through this space, undetected. They appeared at the perfect moment, and disappeared again. Their character voice was truly haunting.

➖ One player got banged up from a jump scare that didn’t leave him enough room to jump back safely. Another player did not appreciate the character’s approach to a solo moment.

➕ The gameplay was well signed-posted. On multiple occasions finding a prop would trigger an aha… invariably forcing us to move to a different part of the space, which could be a terrifying prospect. The set and props were memorable and throughout this game, we felt clever.

➕ In order to keep us on edge for 70 minutes, Malum continually pulled us apart. There were solo moments, and even puzzles that puzzled us to different areas of a big space. Separating might lead to nothing, or it might lead to something terrifying. The apprehension was real.

➖ One late-game puzzle felt tedious, as it rolled on and on. It didn’t build apprehension either. We also encountered a ghost puzzle.

➕/➖ The set up for the most bombastic scene change was cheesy. But we appreciate how it kept us all in the right place, and thus safe.

➕ The memorable moments were very… metal. These were well choreographed with lighting and sound design. The reveals were impressive.

➖ The focal point of the last set was underused. We wanted more from this set, and from the finale.

➖ Narratively there was a conclusion to Malum, but cinematically, it wasn’t satisfying. The finale didn’t live up to some of the more bombastic scenes.

➖ Malum was fully playable in English. Strangely, however, Krematorium Escape Rooms Experience only translated half of the rules poster into English 🤷‍♀️