Mystery Escape Room - "Moriarty's Parlor" and "Return to Treasure Island"

Photos provided by Mystery Escape Room

Company: Mystery Escape Room

Country: USA 🇺🇸

Language: English

Type of Game: Digital Escape Game (W/GM) 💻

Size of Team: 4-8 Players (Ages 10+)

Time: 60 Minutes

Price: $80/ team

🆃🅷🅴 🅶🅰🅼🅴 🅿🅻🅰🆈

Our game master (Detective Gray) for Moriarty's Parlor greeted us over Google Meet. We were given a link to a website where the point-n-click game was located on. We're also provided with an excel sheet and a word doc file. Once the game started, the GM served as a guide incase we needed hints. Our GM was a bit too hands-on in terms of giving hints as there were times we did not ask for one but one was provided to us. In the "Return to Treasure Island" game, Captain Lark gave us more freedom and did a great job with giving just enough nudge to get us through the game.

The graphics of the games were great. We felt like the manor design in Moriarty's Parlor had a mysterious vibe to it. We did like that there were various rooms to "travel" from and to. The pirate's ship also had a few "surprises" that we didn't expect and reminded us of hidden rooms in real escape rooms.

The interface however was not very user friendly. Whenever we opened something, we would need to remember the code because it'll lock again after we leave the puzzle. This caused a lot wasted time for our team especially not knowing about this for the first game. In the "Return to Treasure Island" game, we had to ask our Captain to bypass a puzzle for us as we would've had to repeat a few solved puzzles again in order to get to where we needed to be for the final puzzle. There was simply not enough time.

All the information that we found had to be copied and pasted by ourselves to the word doc and excel sheet. If the players were not use to using these programs, it'll make it quite difficult for them to interact with the team. There were also a lot of moments where we're confused on what was done already and what wasn't used yet. Some players also mistakenly deleted other player's copied info as we're doing so many things at the same time. If the game master could take on the role of removing items for us that would help a lot in this situation.

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Game: Moriarty's Parlor

Genre: Detective

Date Played: 2/6/2021

Difficulty (based on 4 players): 5/10

🆃🅷🅴 🆂🆃🅾🆁🆈

You and your team have infiltrated Moriarty's parlor but he already knew you were coming. He's set some dangerous traps for you guys and if you don't get out in 60 minutes, you and your team will be poisoned by deadly gas!

🆃🅷🅴 🅿🆄🆉🆉🅻🅴🆂

Since this is a point-n-click game, we didn't mind the "search and find" elements in the game as it gave teammates different task to do at the same time. There were also a few fun decoding puzzles and if you like Math, there were quite a good amount of those types of puzzles as well. We finished the game with 26 minutes or so left on the clock.

𝔼𝕊ℂ𝔸ℙ𝔼𝕋ℍ𝔼ℝ𝕆𝕆𝕄𝕖𝕣𝕤❜ ℙ.𝕀.𝕤❜ 𝕋𝕙𝕠𝕦𝕘𝕙𝕥𝕤

Jorge L.

This adventure was a nicely decorated digital experience. There were A LOT of different things you need to have open and the host did a good job of explaining what needs to be opened and how to use those for the game. This was played mostly as a 360 of a room where we were able to all independently interact with items in the game. The adventure is set up where there are a ton of items you can access at once, which allows for non-linear gameplay and a constant rush of things to do. I would recommend players write as a group what is done, as I spent the entire game on a single puzzle and the rest finding things that had already been found or solved. This is great if you really like divide and conquer styled gameplay designed for more advanced players. I would also recommend setting with the host as to the level of interaction and assistance as you'd like from them before the start of the game, especially if you're more advanced. Overall, however, it was a great experience!

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Samantha W.

The game was fair- it had a good mix of puzzles of differing levels of difficulty. The graphics and gameplay however seemed a little old fashioned.

My main criticism would be that I felt it was quite disjointed because unless you work as a team it is easy to get lost with what is being done by everyone else and hence diminishes the experience a little. However this is not necessarily a problem with the game and could be overcome with a ‘team talk’ at the beginning to determine if people want to work together or individually.

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Game: Return to Treasure Island

Genre: Fantasy

Date Played: 2/8/2021

Difficulty (based on 5 players): 6.5/10

🆃🅷🅴 🆂🆃🅾🆁🆈

You've been locked up in a storage room onboard a pirate ship. The rest of the crew are on the island looking for Gold. This is your chance to escape the jail cell and sail away with the Gold onboard the ship!

🆃🅷🅴 🅿🆄🆉🆉🅻🅴🆂

This game will require audio at some point so we recommend headphones. There were a good amount of puzzles in this game. In comparison, this was definitely a harder game versus the Moriarty's Parlor in our opinion. We finished with 1 minute 45 second remaining. The interface definitely caused a bit of delay as the system was not synced so each player would have to complete their own puzzle in order to move forward. We had to wait and inform the other players throughout the game play on where everyone's at and update them with the passwords so we can move forward as a team. It was quite difficult since there were a lot of different areas to explore on the ship.

𝔼𝕊ℂ𝔸ℙ𝔼𝕋ℍ𝔼ℝ𝕆𝕆𝕄𝕖𝕣𝕤❜ ℙ.𝕀.𝕤❜ 𝕋𝕙𝕠𝕦𝕘𝕙𝕥𝕤

Koen G.

Our small review:

Pro's

- Great game host! (love pirate names)

- Good graphics

- Nice level of puzzles

- Good designed puzzles

- Good use of the Google doc

- Good difficulty level

Con's

- Game system (opening new tabs, loss of progress)

- Puzzles not always designed to play with a group of people in virtual environment

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Jachin L.

Return to Treasure Island being my first online escape game with a time limit made it extra exciting. There was a good mix of different kind of puzzles. The ones I didn't get quick enough, other team mates solved and the ones I solved were right up my alley. The pictures used were a mix of realistic and created ones and they drew me into the story. I would definitely recommend Return to Treasure Island to friends. If it's also possible to play with a hint system instead of a game master and no time limit I think I would have enjoyed it even more.

🅲🅻🅾🆂🅸🅽🅶 🆃🅷🅾🆄🅶🅷🆃🆂

We really enjoy the graphics and puzzles in these games. The only thing we were frustrated over was the interface. If the game could be synced where if one player did something, it would update for the rest of the players and the items that were unlocked would stay unlocked, it would make the game play a lot smoother. I am not sure if game master was really necessary for these types of digital point-n-click games unless there's a storytelling element from the game masters. We could easily complete the entire game on our own with a build-in hint system. I look forward to seeing other formats of digital games Mystery Escape Room would come up with in the future.

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(If you do decide to try this game, please remember to let them know that you heard it from"ESCAPETHEROOMers"!)

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

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