The Escape Game - "Space Race | Mission: Mars"

Updated: Apr 27

Photo above is property of The Escape Game

Company: The Escape Game

Game: Space Race | Mission: Mars

Country: USA 🇺🇸

Language: English

Type of Game: Digital Game w/ Live Host 💁

Genre: Sci-Fi

Date Played: June 19, 2021

Difficulty (based on 5 players): 5.5/10

Size of Team: Up to 7 Players (Recommended ages 13+)

Time: 60 Minutes

Price: $28/pp

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Your ship suffered from severe damage when you landed on Mars. Other than this issue, the radiation level is rising, communication with Command Deck hasn't been successful and you're working with an outdated android! Will you and your team be able to repair the ship in time to escape from Mars?

Video above is property of The Escape Game

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We were greeted by our lovely GM, JD on Zoom. He gave us clear instructions on how their online interface works before sending us off on our mission. Our game started with an intro video from Command Deck followed by instructions on how to use the interface. Our GM stayed hidden on Zoom but would pop in anytime we had a question or needed help with a technical issue. Everything worked quite nicely except for two things which the company is currently trying to resolve: 1. You'll need to refresh the screen from time to time if a certain action wasn't updated 2. The interface is currently too big to fit on one page so you'll have to drag up and down in order to see the video, map, chat and inventory. Most of the time, we just used audio communication through Zoom but the option of having the chat box in the interface was a nice add feature so we don't have to toggle back to Zoom's chat in order to pass notes to each other.

This game is a point-n-click style cooperative game where you work together as a team to solve all the puzzles. If one player opens a certain lock, it'll open for everyone. Since there are times where multiple puzzles are opened up at the same time, you might miss out on how some of the puzzles were solved. It might help for the company to provide a debrief (walk through) at the end of the game with the players. The interface will indicate the active puzzles with a blue lock, solved puzzles with a green check and locked puzzles with a red lock. Most of the time if a solution was correct, we'll be awarded with a prerecorded video. At times the team also had to make decisions by voting. We almost had a split decision in the game which could have given us a bit of a different storyline.

Since the urgency of the situation made some of our teammates felt like they needed to play this game in a competition mode, we escaped with 27 minutes and 24 seconds (New record!). We didn't get to try the various optional videos that was in the game as we've mostly chosen the right choices to proceed. I would have loved to see those hilarious videos from HAL, the android. If The Escape Game can make these optional videos available for the players to watch after the game ended, that would be fantastic.

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Most of the puzzles were not difficult but more concentrated on team building. There's a lot of "pay attention to details" to retrieve codes or discover symbols etc...Communication was definitely key in this game. Some puzzles actually needed more than one player to complete. At times it felt like a few dominate players would be doing most of the puzzles and others were just watching. It would be great if there could be assigned roles where only that certain player is able to interact with those puzzles but the other teammates can contribute their ideas. We really enjoyed all of the puzzles and the unique way The Escape Game was able to incorporate videos to narrate the game. As we repaired one section of the spaceship, we were then allowed into other areas and so forth.

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For enthusiast that are quick with puzzles, they might feel that the price could be a bit steep per person due to the fact that there's a GM hosting the game. I would love to see The Escape Game have an optional for a non hosted game so they could play at their own leisure. For players who are not familiar with digital style escape games and need assistance with tech, I would definitely recommend the GM version. This is a very polished and entertaining game. We wouldn't expect any less from The Escape Game being that we're big fans of their production. The video qualities were amazing. We literally felt like we're on a spaceship on Mars. The audio was very clear as well so it made the experience felt very real. These videos were actually made from their real life room "Mission: Mars". I would be very excited to play this room in person one day!

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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 The Escape Game for providing us with a sample of the game. Although complimentary experience was generously provided, it does not impact our opinion on the review whatsoever.