The Brotherhood - "The Brotherhood"

LOCATION:  Stompetoren, Netherlands

Photo above is property of The Brotherhood

Photo above is property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

📝 ETR DECODER

🔑 GAME: The Brotherhood
📅 DATE PLAYED: November 10, 2024
🎬 GENRE: Thriller
🧠 DIFFICULTY (Based on 2 ppl): 7/10
👥 TOTAL # OF PLAYERS: 2-4 ppl (Ages 16+)
🕒 LENGTH OF TIME: 90 Mins.
💰 PRICE: €179/ Group
☎️ BOOKING TYPE: Private
🔓 ESCAPED/ COMPLETED?: Yes

📖 THE STORY

We live in a world plagued with unhappiness, dissatisfaction, craving, and emptiness. The brothers and sisters of The Happiness Project have developed a training process to help recruits shed these negative feelings and replace them with joyful fulfillment. While their methods are unorthodox, everyone who eventually leaves reports being changed by the experience. Will you be able to withstand the initiation challenges and rituals in order to emerge renewed, ready to set the world aflame as a soul reborn?

🎯 HIT THE BULLSEYE

The environment is by turns intense and heavy. The atmosphere is curated to provide not just sights and sounds that transport you but also stimulate all of your senses.
The construction is from metal and stone, adding gritty realism to the weight of the adventure itself. It is a large space with many dark areas and dim lighting, but we were able to see everything we needed, as well as make our way around without fumbling.
The experience moves smoothly between generating an ominous sense of dread and providing some time and space to process the experience and work on the puzzles.
Some of the puzzles are more challenging than many found in the more experiential horror/thriller rooms of the Netherlands, and require you to draw upon multiple sources of information and work effectively as a team, which we very much appreciated!
The story develops as you move through the many stages of the initiation, and provides an interactive, satisfying conclusion in which you are a full participant, rather than observer. No ending video wrap-up for this room! You make it happen.

🧩 MISSED THE MARK

The atmospheric nature of the hint system, coupled with the acoustics of the space, made a couple of hints a bit hard to understand the first time given, but that was never an obstacle to finishing some of the trickier puzzles.

🏹 TAKE A SHOT?

As long as you speak decent English and are OK with crawling, getting a bit dirty, and toying around with some heavy religious themes, the answer is a resounding yes! We emerged with a fresh coating of gratitude, as well as an appreciation for the amount of work put into building this experience in an otherwise empty space. It has a solid set of puzzles, an appropriately oppressive feel, and a thoroughly developed story arc. Another excellent room in the Netherlands' collection of thriller experiences (and one that non-horror-lovers like Krista can still enjoy)!

🔎 HINT

Don’t be afraid to look towards the action!

ℹ️ ADDITIONAL INFO

The Happiness Experience (which is run by The Brotherhood) is located in an industrial park of sorts, that belies the zen nature of the welcoming.
While there is no exterior signage, the number of the building is clearly marked.
When the time is right, you can let yourself into the quiet, peaceful entry, and then store your things in a lovely rattan box before using the restroom.
The warmth and ambience resembles that of a waiting room at a spa, and gave us the feeling that we were about to get a relaxing massage, or perhaps do some calming yoga.
The tastefully sparse decor allowed our minds to settle and our thoughts to merge with the universe.

Photos above are property of The Brotherhood

BOOK NOW

(If you do decide to try this game, give us a shoutout or tag us on social media so we know you heard it from "ESCAPETHEROOMers"!)

Disclosure: We thank The Brotherhood for comping our tickets for this game. Although discounted admission was generously provided, it does not impact our opinion of the review whatsoever.