Photo above is property of Walking Shadow Theatre Company
Company: Walking Shadow Theatre Company
Game: Reboot
Country: USA 🇺🇸
Language: English
Type of Game: Online Immersive Experience 🎭
Genre: Adventure
Date Played: August 20, 2021
Difficulty (based on 8 players): 5/10
Size of Team: 6-10 Players (Recommended Ages 14+)
Time: 90-105 Minutes
Price: $60.00/pp
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You and your team of computer hackers receive an urgent message from Agent Halo at the Department of Defense. They know about your involvement in the many hacker attacks around the country, but you are not in trouble, yet. By helping Agent Halo with an old government project you might be able to strike yourselves a deal!
Video above is property of Walking Shadow Theatre Company
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After making sure that we all have our codenames setup and that the line is secure in our Zoom call, Agent Halo (live actor) gives us our first test to make sure that our team is trustworthy.
Throughout the game their digital assistant Bernice is sending us information and links in the Zoom chat. The links take you to different websites and also Google Drive documents. You'll need to find passwords and solve other tasks in order to gain access to some of them. While investigating the info given, you can also direct Agent Halo to perform tasks in the physical room that they were in. To solve the puzzles, you will need to utilize both resources.
The storyline is told through videos, communication and still images, You'll be able to have discussions with various characters in the game. Don't be afraid to show off some improv skills and step away from puzzle solving mode from time to time!
While playing, you will not only be asked to prove that you are human (whatever that means), you might also have to answer some personal and philosophical questions. There might even be a surprising point during the game where you might be separated from the pack. Can you handle the pressure?
Photos above are properties of Walking Shadow Theatre Company
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The game starts off with an easy puzzle that requires everybody to share information and work together to solve, a great way to make sure everyone joins in on the first task.
The puzzles are cute and on theme, with a good mix of search and find, word plays, deductions and ciphers. One of my favourite ones was a word puzzle that we even had to get a hint for, but once we figured it out the solution, it was quite clever and easy enough to solve even for a non native English speaker like myself.
If you have played an escape room before you might take into consideration that this experience has fewer puzzles than a pure escape room of 90+ minutes would have, to give room for story development and audience interactions.
The final task made us discuss as a team how we wanted to proceed, step by step we had to agree on what to do. We were given 7 whole minutes to decide and those minutes flew by. Luckily we all managed to agree within that time.
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The game not only raised plenty of philosophical questions for us to think about like what defines life and what is free will but also gave us a chance to put our votes in to make decisions. It makes us think about questions like if this is not a game, will we still make the same decisions? I enjoyed all of this, but there is still some further potential for our answers to be utilized more in the puzzles, tasks and other game elements and not only in the storyline. There were times when we felt that the Q&A segment felt a little long and the answers weren't really utilized in a thicker plot for later development. Although one use of our answers was quite innovative.
It is definitely worthy to point out again that we would categorize this more as an immersive theater experience rather than a standard escape room format as the storyline was definitely the focal point rather than the puzzles. We really enjoyed the puzzle presentation right before the show. There were a few "wow" moments that only a few of our players noticed and it quickly became a chain reaction after that.
In summary, the discussions and decisions we participated in this game actually made me think about the consequences even after the show. Reboot is a storytelling performance that explored on ideas of technology, identity and personal freedom in an intriguing and innovative way!
*** This game can no longer be booked as a remote game but check out their in-person experiences ***
(If you do decide to try this game, please remember to let them know that you heard it from"ESCAPETHEROOMers"!)
Disclosure: We thank Walking Shadow Theatre Company 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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