Project: Escape - "Nautilus"

Updated: Apr 12

LOCATION:  Marietta, Georgia, USA

Photo above is property of Project: Escape

Photos above are property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

📝 ETR DECODER

🔑 GAME: Nautilus
📅 DATE PLAYED: January 22, 2022
🎬 GENRE: Adventure
🧠 DIFFICULTY (Based on 2 ppl): 10/10
👥 TOTAL # OF PLAYERS: 2-10 ppl
🕒 LENGTH OF TIME: 75 Mins.
💰 PRICE: $33.99/ pp (Min. 3 ppl)
☎️ BOOKING TYPE: Private
🔓 ESCAPED/ COMPLETED?: No

📖 THE STORY

Stuck 20,000 Leagues below the sea, The Nautilus is being attacked by a terrifying sea creature who has just penetrated the hull. You and your team got separated trying to fix critical components of the ship when everything went dark. Now, half of you are in the captain's quarters while the other half is stuck in engineering. It is up to you to restore power back to The Nautilus, reunite with your other crew members, make it to the bridge and try to steer the ship away from the creature wreaking havoc before imminent drowning in approximately 75 minutes. Good luck submariners, you will need it!

🎯 HIT THE BULLSEYE

The dark dreary engine room filled with machines and mechanisms directly opposes the captain's lavish headquarters that the teams will start their adventure in. They don’t quite know what secrets lie in each room but you must get together to complete the adventure. It is a wonderful idea straying from the typical split start and communication is KEY in order to meet back together.
Each room is decorated in such a way that it would be pulled out of a deep dark ocean movie. With plenty of little details and larger props (such as an old diving suit) our team had no trouble immersing ourselves into the world of The Nautilus.
The puzzles in this game, aside from the initial one, are very physically based. There is a lot of running back and forth between rooms and searching needed to finish the game. Interactivity with props is a must and the more you play around with the items in the game, the more your team will find out. There is also a very clever use of a technology that I have seen using one connection point previously, in The Nautilus, there are six points to connect.

🧩 MISSED THE MARK

The props in this room, while immersed with the scenic design, felt like it needs some TLC. There were a couple issues during play where our team wasn’t quite sure if it was the correct solution due to the quality of the pieces involved. One prop in particular; our team had to use more than two finger strength to get it open and we lost significant time.
One puzzle my teammate could not properly obtain the code to the correct solution. Using his wits, he was able to figure out each message individually but it took significantly more time than it needed to.

🏹 TAKE A SHOT?

One quick note before finishing up my thoughts. Our team played this room at the end of January where the length was sixty minutes. Due to the difficulty of this room, the owners have lengthened the time to seventy five minutes at the beginning of February 2022. My thoughts below are from the perspective of a sixty minute game but adding the extra fifteen minutes will allow more groups to complete the challenge that is The Nautilus.

"Nautilus" is the hardest room that I have encountered while enjoying this hobby for years now and the best part about playing this room...we loved nearly every second. Puzzles are front and center in this experience, spending about a sixth of our time trying to reach each other was an intriguing portion of the game and when more players would be involved they can spend their time searching around the room looking for objects or clues or details. It is a game about optimizing time and resources. There are a large amount of puzzles, a medium amount of long puzzles, and a short amount of time. Identify each player's strengths and weaknesses and adjust quickly. Most of the riddles are able to be solved non-linearly; spread out and conquer. The set design was really fun and just as detailed as it needed to be to give the illusion we were on a submarine on the bottom of the ocean where the titular vessel was described by Verne himself. Our team failed with two players and I do not recommend playing with such a small number (although with an extra fifteen minutes we most likely would have gotten out. It would have been close though) four players would be a good minimum to this game. Gives each person a puzzle buddy to bounce ideas and assist in communication puzzles throughout. This is a game meant for the escape and puzzle enthusiast, if this is one of your first escape rooms, choose a simpler game offered by Project: Escape. For all those looking for a challenge, make your way to The Nautilus and see if you can defeat the beast and escape with your lives.

ℹ️ ADDITIONAL INFO

Free parking, one person must crawl, party room available, scavenger hunt inside venue.

Photos above are property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

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