Exit Productions - "Jury Duty"

Videos/ Photos provided by Exit Productions

Company: Exit Productions

Game: Jury Duty

Country: United Kingdom 🇬🇧

Language: English

Type of Game: Online Immersive Experience 🎭

Date Played: 8/3/2020

Difficulty (based on 6 players): 5.5/10

Size of Team: Up to 12 Players

Time: 105 Minutes

Price: £15/PP

"Jury Duty" was an one of a kind online immersive experience played over Zoom. The players would be acting as jurors on a case to help to determine if the defendant was innocent or not. With the new Justice Act (2020), all trials were being done remotely.

The game started with an intro video and then all the players met in the lobby of Zoom. Thereafter, we're broken into two breakout rooms with 3 players each. If you didn't book a private experience, you'll be paired with strangers. We loved meeting people from all over the world so that was not an issue for us at all. Both of the breakout rooms were presented with the same evidence. There were a lot of reading so it was wise to split the workload with our teammates. Throughout the game we've encountered analyzing evidences, encrypting secret messages, searching through social media for clues, decoding voicemails, etc. We even got to interrogate the defendant! It was very interesting to see the story unravel as we dug up more "juicy" material to uncover the truth. After 40 minutes or so into the game, we were able to join forces with the rest of the players from the other breakout room. It was very useful to share the information we found with them and vise versa. We were also able to work together for the rest of the game and interrogate the defendant one last time.

In the end, we uncovered a lot of surprising twists in the story and were able to correctly determine 2 out of 3 crimes the defendant had committed. This game really gave us a real life experience of how to work under time pressure and with a group of strangers. It also made us realize how "corrupted" a system could be if it was heavily dependent on opinions. For instance, we felt that we didn't have enough evidence to determine the answer we got wrong but after the game designer explained it to us, it felt like there were other ways to accomplish that without the hard evidence. The actor also did a great job at swaying our opinion. We hope to see a different type of concept for game (perhaps one that bases more on evidence) just for a comparison on game play. But thanks to this game, I probably will not be so dreadful when I see a Jury Duty summons in my mailbox in the future.

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(If you do decide to try this game, give us a shoutout or tag us on social media so we know you heard it from "ESCAPETHEROOMers"!)

Disclosure: We thank Exit Productions for comping our tickets for this game. Although a complimentary experience was generously provided, it does not impact our opinion on the review whatsoever.