Mouju Escaping City Parlor - "Perfect Painting"

Updated: Apr 22

LOCATION:  Nanjing, China

Mouju Escaping City Parlor - Perfect Painting

Photo above is property of Mouju Escaping City Parlor

Photo above is property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

Date Played: July 14, 2023

Genre: Mystery, Supernatural

Difficulty (Based on 6 PPL): 6/10

Total # of Players: 3-6 PPL

Length of Time: 90 Minutes

Price: ¥118/PP

Booking Type: Private

Escaped? Yes

📖 THE STORY

Your art teacher has gone missing for several days now. Determined to find the truth, you led a group of students into their workspace. Soon you begin to realize that some things are better left hidden...

🎯 HIT THE BULLSEYE

The writer behind the storyline of this game was pretty impressive. If you were able to follow through from beginning to end, you would find various ways of interpreting the information you found throughout the game. There were even two endings (if you ask the GM at the end, he'll be able to explain both to you)!
There were a few cool moments where the imagery and ambiance of the room turned to match the emotional stage of the narration.
The clue reveals were followed by solving various puzzles and it was clear and well connected to the storyline.

🧩 MISSED THE MARK

Being that Nanjing was quite hot in the summer and we had 6 people, it was very uncomfortable being in a room without any AC for most parts of the game.
Some props needed to be maintained and updated.
This was a dimly lit room and finding some of the information in small fonts was pretty difficult.
A few of the puzzles involved images that we had to interpret the meanings in order to correctly understand the story. This was a difficult task as some images could be interpreted in more than just one way.

🏹 TAKE A SHOT?

"Perfect Painting" was the first escape room game that we played in Mainland, China. This game could only be played in Chinese. There were a lot of clues that were written in Chinese that the player would need to understand in order to solve the puzzles. Since Brandon doesn't understand any Chinese, his main job was searching and solving what he could based on what he could familiarize himself with. On the other hand, I had to interpret the information in English while playing the game at the same time. It definitely added to the difficulty level. This room was probably a good representation of Gen-1 rooms with a heavy narrative in Mainland, China but definitely not one of the top quality rooms in terms of set design or tech. If you're not a native, it would be difficult to find and book games in China as most of the games could only be booked through various APPs as the companies don't have their individual websites. Almost all the games are also in Chinese, so if you do want to go experience the games, you'll have to bring an interpreter. Don't choose games that are heavily involved in role-playing either. Regardless, it was an interesting experience and definitely worth checking out to get a vibe of China's views on escape rooms!