Videos/ Photos were provided by Leenook
Company: Leenook
Game: The Equation
Country: Canada 🇨🇦
Language: English/French
Type of Game: Digital Escape Game W/ GM 💻
Genre: Mystery
Date Played: 4/27/2021
Difficulty (based on 6 players): 5.5/10
Size of Team: 2-8 Players (available also for corporate booking)
Time: Max 2 hours
Price: CA $23.99/pp
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There's something strange about Max Borne's death that has never been discovered. As new recruits in the secret organization, you and your team decided to investigate Max's office once more. Perhaps this time you'll be able to find something that will unravel this mystery?
🆃🅷🅴 🅶🅰🅼🅴 🅿🅻🅰🆈
You and your team will be meeting on a video conferencing platform called "Veertly". Your GM will meet you in the lobby and assign your team to a breakout room after the initial debrief. Make sure you are playing this on a computer with a fairly large screen (if possible) as certain buttons/screen space might be cut off if you don't expand the screen to full capacity (one of our players experienced this and had to call our GM in to repair the issue). This is a point-n-click game with build-in video components. The game is not synced so each teammate will need to enter the passwords in their own device in order proceed. There's a progress bar on the top of the screen so if you feel like you're moving too fast, you should slow down and wait for your teammates. Once you game starts, your GM will not longer be in the room. If you need their assistance, you'll need to message them to come back in.
The game provided us with 360 views of various rooms. You can Zoom in and out of the screens to get a closer look at certain items. There are also items with hotspots that will provide you with a video so you can see the prerecorded actions done by the GM as he/she searches the room and inputs codes in the game. Do not refresh your browser during the game as if you rejoin the game, you'll need to input the passwords from the beginning all over again.
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This is a linear game. While the players can explore and find clues for the puzzles, you'll eventually come together to solve the same puzzle. In this case, this design also helps the team to progress at the same time. Most of the triggers were done by choose the right video, input the right keycode or using the right tool. It took a bit of getting use to as most of the point-n-click games we've played didn't incorporate so many videos that were merely for examining items. At the beginning, we were not sure if they were all relevant info that we needed for the puzzles or not. At times, I would forget if I've already pressed on a certain video or not so that wasted a good amount of time. If you want to keep up with the team, you can also skip the video by dragging it to the end. The puzzles mostly stuck with the theme of the game and we had a good amount of calculations that we had to do as a team. Some clues were more pertaining to the storyline but at the time felt like red herrings. At the end, the GM did inform us how those were all connected and it did help to get an overall picture for a more conclusive ending.
🅲🅻🅾🆂🅸🅽🅶 🆃🅷🅾🆄🅶🅷🆃🆂
Paired with classical music and an office décor that's full of formulas, I felt like I was transported to a famous scientist's secret workspace. If you're impatient, you might feel like the game had too many videos to go through but you do have 2 hours to complete the mission. We finished in 1 hr and 5 minutes with a team of 6 but you can certainly enjoy and play it in a more leisure way. For this game, we felt the same as some of the other digital games we've played in terms of the value of having a GM. The price per person is similar to some of the remote games with avatar. If the GM cannot provide a dedicated support like entertaining the players with an audio escape type of attention then this game could just be played as a pure digital game that we should be able to purchase anytime to play on our own. I can understand this being great for corporate events since they can be moderated in different breakout rooms but as enthusiasts the price felt quite steep. It would be great if both options could be provided so players can choose which better suit their needs.
*** We regret to inform this company has closed its doors ***
Disclosure: We thank Leenook for providing us with a sample of their game. Although a complimentary experience was generously provided, it does not impact our opinion on the review whatsoever.
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