LuCo Online Escape Rooms - "Monster Hunters Academy"

Updated: Apr 27

Videos/ Photos provided by LuCo Online Escape Rooms

Company: LuCo Online Escape Rooms

Game: Monster Hunters Academy

Country: USA 🇺🇸

Language: English

Type of Game: Audio/GM led Escape Room 👂

Genre: Fantasy

Date Played: 2/1/2021

Difficulty (based on 4 players): 6.5/10

Size of Team: 2-6 Players (Age 10+)

Time: 60 Minutes

Price: $20.00/ pp (15% off groups of 4+)

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Professor Brunwaldo Corso has left his dying wish for you to defeat a Mythical creature. As his apprentice and a student of Monster Hunter Academy, you are ready to avenge for the professor. The protection spell will only work for an hour. Hurry!

🆃🅷🅴 🅶🅰🅼🅴 🅿🅻🅰🆈

You and your team will be joined by a game master over Zoom. The game master will introduce the backstory through audio. The puzzles will be presented to you in image format.

Once our team confirmed that we're ready, our game master got into character right away. It felt like we've just entered into the world of Harry Potter (it would be nice to have some added music components to go along with the audio story). The graphics were really pretty. It had a nice color selection. Kind of reminded us of those ancient magic books.

The goal of the game is to identify the monster, make an elixir, choose a weapon and vanquish the beast. We're able to inform the GM on what we like to do and "explore" the various areas. We liked how the images were able to be zoom in when we wanted to take a closer look at certain areas. The GM was also helpful at guiding us on what's important and what not to waste time on. Another great thing that this game had that we haven't seen other audio escape rooms do is providing a "before and after" image. It was satisfying to see the "unlocking" photo after confirming the answers were correct by the GM.

🆃🅷🅴 🅿🆄🆉🆉🅻🅴🆂

All of the puzzles revolved around the mythical theme. At times we found ourselves looking into the detail drawings of these lovely creatures and forgotten to solve puzzles. Even though the puzzles are designed in a nonlinear way, because only one image can be shown on the screen each time, you'll have to work on the puzzles together as a team. However you can jump around and explore various areas if you want to come back to a puzzle that you're stuck on.

Since there's no inventory system for individual players, I found that it was easier to take photos with my phone (of course delete them right after the game) rather than writing items down. This way your team doesn't have to wait for you to write down things or stay on that image for too long. We worked together nicely as a team of 4 and completed the game in 40 minutes. The puzzles were quite satisfying even for experienced players.

🅲🅻🅾🆂🅸🅽🅶 🆃🅷🅾🆄🅶🅷🆃🆂

If you enjoy mythical creatures and want to imagine yourself being a hero like Harry Potter for once, you'll definitely want to check out this game. If your GM would like to entertain you, I'm sure you'll have a ton of fun doing some magic spells that you wouldn't be able to do in an in-person escape room. Good luck with beast and make sure to explore every inch of the room!

𝔼𝕊ℂ𝔸ℙ𝔼𝕋ℍ𝔼ℝ𝕆𝕆𝕄𝕖𝕣𝕤❜ ℙ.𝕀.𝕤❜ 𝕋𝕙𝕠𝕦𝕘𝕙𝕥𝕤

Jen M.

Last night I played LuCo's Monster Hunters Academy with Brandon, Cici, and Matt. (This was quite brave on my part. We've never met in real life, but I'm 98.6% certain that Cici is a vampire based on the timestamps of the emails she's sent me.)

The theme of this online audio escape is a familiar genre—filled with werewolves, vampires, goblins, and other creatures that go bump in the night and requiring enchanted weapons, magic potions, and that sort of thing to save the day—which makes it easy to jump in. But the game maker's approach feels respectful and celebratory, not derivative or imitative. Kudos.

The game progresses through a series of illustrated images as the gamemaster narrates the story (in a surprisingly effective fake accent). The graphic style is professional, consistent, playful, and aesthetically pleasing. The illustrations manage to offer lots of visual interest with enough details to keep you on your toes looking for clues while not sacrificing clarity or misleading you. The artist found the perfect balance.

The puzzle elements were well suited to collaborative team game play, and there were enough of them to keep us fully entertained. The degree of difficulty matched the advertised level of Medium.

The puzzles, the artwork, and the fun attitude all rate a thumbs up from me. I had no major complaints, so instead I'll throw an idea out to LuCo: I think a few well-timed sound effects would be a great addition to the overall experience.

Our result? In the end, our team prevailed and defeated a mythical creature—and hopefully Cici won't drink our blood.

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Matthew L.

Pros

+ The artwork was phenomenal! It had a weathered paper, parchment feel to it, which fit the theme perfectly.

+ The puzzles were well thought out, logical and themed into the story.

+ The host (Kate) was amazing! Her voice acting brought such an amazing feel to the game.

+ Sooo many easter eggs for anyone who is into monster hunting and monster-lore!

Cons

- One logic puzzle could have used different wording as we were not entirely sure what they were asking. (grasping for straws really to find something I didn't like....)

Overall

This game was amazing and definitely one of the better audio escape rooms I have done. It hit all the right chords for me; the artwork, the story, the GM interaction and her role playing. There were also a ton of Easter eggs that I loved as a monster-lore fan. I would highly recommend getting some friends together and doing this game! I can't wait to try out their other games!

*** 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.