Photos provided by Escape Room Enigmarium
Company: Escape Room Enigmarium
Game: Maestro Luigi & the Secret Recipe
Country: Slovenia 🇸🇮
Language: English, Slovenian
Type of Game: Remote Escape Room 🗣
Genre: Adventure
Date Played: 2/20/2021
Difficulty (based on 5 players): 5/10
Size of Team: 2-5 Players Time: 60 Minute (+15 Minutes) Price: €75/ Team (2-5 Players)
🆃🅷🅴 🆂🆃🅾🆁🆈
The famous chef Luigi made a recipe for a pasta dish that will make the world very happy. Unfortunately the gangs found out as well and they are on their way to retrieve the secret. You only have 60 minutes to figure out the decrypted message that Luigi had left for you. Once you've decoded the message, make sure to destroy it so it won't fall into the wrong hands!
🆃🅷🅴 🅶🅰🅼🅴 🅿🅻🅰🆈
We were greeted inside the kitchen over Zoom. Our avatar gave us a verbal introduction before the game began. We would probably suggest either a video trailer or telling the narrative while we're playing the room as it felt a bit too long.
The set design was very cute. We felt like we've entered a home kitchen. We loved all the vibrant colors. It definitely had a happy vibe. Our GM was great at keeping the energy up for our group throughout the game play. We're semi jealous that she got to do all the physical puzzles but on the other hand, I'm also quite happy sipping my coffee while watching her make all the "magic" happen.
There's no inventory system that's paired with the game. We did have to take a few snapshots with our phones so other members of our group could continue to look at other things while we focused on solving the puzzles. Our GM did a great job with setting the clues that were relevant together on the table. Having an inventory system would benefit the game as sometimes we felt like the GM had already "completed" some aspects of the puzzles by putting it in order. It would be great if these clues could be translated into the inventory portal so we could do them on our own.
🆃🅷🅴 🅿🆄🆉🆉🅻🅴🆂
Escape Room Enigmarium did a great job utilizing all the relevant props that you would have seen in a kitchen to make the puzzles. Some physical puzzles looked really fun and I would've loved to play them in person. One cool prop sort of got lost in translation to the online version because we couldn't see the actual progress but the GM was great at keeping us informed. Most of the puzzles were things you would see in a Gen 1 room but we didn't mind it as long as it was relevant to the theme and made sense. There was one physical puzzle that was rather time consuming mainly because there were a lot of repetitive steps that we had to take in order to solve the puzzle. It was also hard for the GM to understand our directions. I would definitely suggest a more clever way of doing that puzzle over an online interface.
🅲🅻🅾🆂🅸🅽🅶 🆃🅷🅾🆄🅶🅷🆃🆂
For a newcomer to the remote escape room world, Escape Room Enigmarium has most of the important items down. The GM definitely played a big part in this experience. With some more practice on sturdier camera movements, character play and an inventory portal, this could be a solid game. Too bad we can't play this in person. I would love to make a delicious pasta dish!
𝔼𝕊ℂ𝔸ℙ𝔼𝕋ℍ𝔼ℝ𝕆𝕆𝕄𝕖𝕣𝕤❜ ℙ.𝕀.𝕤❜ 𝕋𝕙𝕠𝕦𝕘𝕙𝕥𝕤
Jen M.
Master Luigi & the Secret Recipe serves up some tasty puzzles and good fun. The plot is straight forward—you must recover the famous chef's secret recipe to prevent it from falling into the hands of thugs and bring happiness to the world through delicious pasta. The Italian cooking theme fits perfectly in the brightly colored kitchen scene Enigmarium has created. I love that they incorporated actual appliances into the set and into the puzzles.
It was clear to me that Master Luigi is a delightful escape room. However, it would benefit from some optimizations to make the online play experience as much fun as playing in person. There were points where it was challenging to efficiently instruct the avatar on how to interact with some of the objects and places where it was difficult to see clearly what impact the avatar's actions had. There was one physical puzzle that they shortened for online play, but was still visible in full which created a little unnecessary confusion.
Overall, I was charmed by the theme and some clever puzzles. And now I'm hungry.
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Ryann S.
I had an excellent time playing this game and continuously found myself being wowed when I remembered that I was playing a game in Slovenia while sitting on my couch in Minneapolis. [Seriously—how cool is that?!] This room was packed. There seemed to be an almost endless number of things to search and puzzles to solve. The loosely-kitchen-themed puzzle variety was great, with types ranging from mathematical puzzles to visual puzzles to tactile puzzles (all at a variety of difficulty levels).
While I did really enjoy having our friendly avatar-host act as my hands throughout this game, I also found myself increasingly frustrated with one tactile puzzle. It seemed like my fellow players and I all had the same idea about how to solve the puzzle and tried to communicate this (at the same time) to our avatar with moderate difficulty. This became a bit hectic, though it’s easily “fixable” and certainly didn’t ruin the experience for me. I also felt a quick moment of disappointment when I couldn’t see something super cool that was happening due to camera angle. Thankfully, our avatar explained in detail!
Compared to many other experiences, this one was a bit lighter on the storyline and exposition, with more emphasis on completing the puzzles. In a way, this was beneficial since we didn’t have to read into each puzzle’s solution as part of some grander meaning or advancement of a story. [Of course, I still tried to do that multiple times… including at the very end of the game!] Overall, while there are a few very small ways that the game creators could tweak their in-person room to really shine in a virtual format, this experience was absolutely worth waking up early for.
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Marta I.
I had a pleasure to play this online escape game with a live avatar. The game had a lot of puzzles and there is plenty to do even if you done a few rooms before. Some puzzles really surprised me and one of them I never seen before. The set up was interesting but focus on the camera was going off from time to time and sometimes I wasn't able to see clearly all the items, colours and important details, so I couldn't cope with the rest of the team. I know zoom is taking a lot off the quality but I would suggest some extra lighting in darker places that should improve quality. I think all the puzzles were connected with the theme of the game which is really good. There was a few physical puzzles that I would love to do in person. The avatar made them as easy as possible to follow but some didn't transfer perfect for an online game. I wasn't able to see all the details sometimes. If small improvements will be made or if the whole mechanism will be shown before we start working with the puzzle in more details, then it can make the game more smooth. I was missing an inventory in the game as some of the puzzles contained a lot of pieces or have been placed in different parts of the game. I do recommend an inventory or simplified the puzzle or move them around to get quicker access to all pieces, sometimes a small change will make a huge difference if someone do not prefer an inventory. I do miss a little chat with the game master after the game ( personally I think it is always a nice touch) and a bit more description how the game will look like before, will be beneficial. Overall I had a nice time playing this game and I think if few small improvements will be made the game will be suitable for an excellent online experience.
*** This game can no longer be booked as a remote game but can still be booked as an in-person experience ***
(If you do decide to try this experience, give us a shoutout or tag us on social media so we know you heard it from "ESCAPETHEROOMers"!)
Disclosure: We thank Escape Room Enigmarium 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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