LuCo Online Escape Rooms - "Basements & Barbarians"

Updated: Apr 27

Photo above is property of LuCo Online Escape Rooms

Company: LuCo Online Escape Rooms

Game: Basements & Barbarians

Country: USA 🇺🇸

Language: English

Type of Game: Audio/GM led Escape Room 👂

Genre: Sci-Fi

Date Played: July 26, 2021

Difficulty (based on 4 players): 6/10

Size of Team: 2-8 Players (Ages 10+)

Time: 60 Minutes

Price: $20.00/pp

🆃🅷🅴 🆂🆃🅾🆁🆈

It's a creepy Halloween night in 1984. You are suppose to meet at Jimmy at his home for your weekly session of Catacombs & Creatures. When you got there, no one around. What happen to all your friends?

🆃🅷🅴 🅶🅰🅼🅴 🅿🅻🅰🆈

The format for this game is the same as the other two LuCo games. You and your team will be greeted by a GM on Zoom. The entire experience will be like listening to an audio story with the GM narrating most of the time but if you like to read, I'm sure you'll have your moment to shine. We really liked how our GM Katie gave our teammates a few chance to "perform". It definitely makes the experience more engaging.

We began the game with a beautiful illustration of Jimmy's house. The VCR, video game consoles, snacks and posters brought back so much memories from the 80s. One thing we really appreciate from LuCo Online Escape Rooms is that they really thought about the players perspective when designing their games. There's always a "before" and "after" photo that would be provided once the players know what they need to do for certain puzzle. They also don't like to waste players time by adding in red herrings. So if the GM says there's no photos to show for that area or item then that pretty much means move on and don't waste time here.

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If you're a D&D fan, you might have a slight upper hand on some of the puzzles but there's absolutely no outside knowledge needed for this game. The goal of the game is to find the missing dices and figure out how the friends went missing from Jimmy's last roll. Since the puzzles are non linear and there are spread out around the room, feel free to designate a team leader to be the "explorer". There were a good mixture of logic, visual, phonics type of puzzles. We really enjoyed piecing together relevant information from one area to another. The puzzles had a really nice flow.

🅲🅻🅾🆂🅸🅽🅶 🆃🅷🅾🆄🅶🅷🆃🆂

We've been really amazed by the creativity at LuCo Online Escape Rooms. The storylines were all very different but they took us out of reality and transported us into a mythical world every time. If you read our previous blogs, you already know we're big fans of their artwork but this one was something else. We loved the colors and format they've chosen as it really made us reminisce about the wonderful memories from the 80s. You have to check it out yourself and let us know if you feel the same way!

𝔼𝕊ℂ𝔸ℙ𝔼𝕋ℍ𝔼ℝ𝕆𝕆𝕄𝕖𝕣𝕤❜ ℙ𝕒𝕥𝕣𝕠𝕟𝕤❜ 𝕋𝕙𝕠𝕦𝕘𝕙𝕥𝕤

Melvin L.

Basement & Barbarians is an audio escape game where we were greeted by a game master once we logged into Zoom. She will show an illustration of the 'room' we are in, describing the story and layout of the room, and we can let her know whichever part of the room we want to explore. She will then show a close up view of that area.

Hence, following this format, it is similar to a real life escape room, looking around and trying to solve the puzzles based on the illustrations. For this particular game, 2 things stood out that made this a very memorable experience compared to other audio escape games.

Firstly, our game master, Katie. She was totally into character while narrating the story, so much that I wouldn't be surprised if she was a voice actress for animations! It was so immersive just to hear her narrate and describe the things in the room that it sounds like we were there ourselves!

Secondly, the illustrations were top notch. It was resembling the 1980s Dungeons and Dragons game theme, and the artwork was amazing. Samples can be found on their website, and trust me, the entire game is made of those illustrations! I was further amazed when we heard after the game that these graphics were actually drawn by a person, and not computer graphics!

Of course, besides the theatrics and role playing, the puzzles have to be good if not it will defeat the purpose. I am glad to say the puzzles were excellent. Most of the puzzles fit into the 'D&D' theme or gaming in the 1980s in general. There were references to different video games and 'character building'. It was one of the better rooms I have seen that incorporates themes into their puzzles and the puzzles are not mainly there just for fillers.

Fans of D&D will definitely like this game, but so would puzzle lovers and enthusiasts. Highly recommended!

*** We regret to inform this company has closed its doors ***

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