The Keeper And The Fungus Among UsHeadlock Escape Rooms OnlineEscape roomVirtual Simply delightful. An escape room inside of an immersive story that was built specifically to be played via Zoom. Not terribly difficult but the puzzles are clever and the way everything takes place inside the game world is fantastic. Includes some laugh-out-loud moments. Highest recommendation.
Rise of the FungiHeadlock Escape Rooms OnlineEscape roomVirtual This “prequel” might best be enjoyed after playing “The Keeper and the Fungus Among Us” as it contains a number of easter eggs and nods to the other game, but I don’t think it really matters what order you play them in. This game is just as much fun and just as whimsical. Highest recommendation.
Sherlock Holmes - Phantom's HourWolf Escape Games-OnlineEscape roomVirtual I’m not sure how I feel about the Wolf Escape online games. I have played all three of them. If I compare them to an in-person escape room they are a great deal (20 bucks for 60 to 90 minutes). If I compare them to a computer adventure game they are a terrible deal (a $60 game will have many more puzzles and take a lot longer to finish). But I do enjoy the Wolf Escape games and will keep playing them as they come out, so that’s a thumbs up for Morty purposes. I would put Phantom’s Hour in between the two previous offerings. We liked it more than Hallows Hill and less than Miami Bay. The graphics are excellent. I still think their “backpack” system for letting everyone look at props on an individual device is brilliant. The voice acting is fine (nothing special, but nothing bad). The puzzles are pretty good overall if a bit on the easy side, but with some good variety. There are maybe a dozen puzzles total. The hint system is the same as in the other games; you can get anything from a nudge to a spoiler and it just adds to your time taken. I thought the story was reasonably interesting and it did feel like the sort of case that Sherlock Holmes would take on. Overall, we enjoyed it.
Hallows HillWolf Escape Games-OnlineEscape roomVirtual The app worked very well (we used Firefox). The “virtual backpack” allowing all players to examine objects on their individual devices is very nice. Solid tutorial and we had no technical difficulties. The game has very good production values: excellent graphics and atmospheric audio. The story was interesting if a bit predictable. Limited interactivity within the scenes, and the puzzles aren’t that great, but we had fun. Recommended.
Miami BayWolf Escape Games-OnlineEscape roomVirtual Note: we played the “extended edition” of the game; there was also a shorter version, but I don’t know how it differs — whether there are fewer scenes, fewer puzzles, or easier puzzles. Overall I feel about the same about this game as I did about Wolf Escape’s previous offering “Hallows Hill,” which is that the software, graphics, and voice acting are excellent while the puzzles are mostly not very good. I will say that “Miami Bay” offers a much longer play time than its predecessor, at about 2.5-3 hours vs. 60-90 minutes. The setup is a “Europeans try to satirize / pay homage to U.S. pop culture of the 1980s as seen through the lens of Miami Vice” kind of thing. That isn’t a complaint: I got what they were going for, it definitely isn’t trying to take itself seriously, and it was amusing. (That said, a couple of tips: that is *not* how criss-cross puzzle clues are numbered, the way our larger-denomination bills look has changed since the 1980s so using modern currency feels anachronistic in the same way that using images of Euros for a game set in the 1980s in Europe would be, and Americans generally don’t use a 24-hour clock or write our dates as dd/mm/yyyy.) Overall the story is serviceable, even downright funny at times; it’s just let down by the puzzles, which as I said are mostly not very good, but I do give the designers credit for ambition and variety. The hint system does what you need it to do, so don’t be shy about taking hints as there are several “guess what I’m thinking” puzzles. We didn’t encounter any bugs and it was a fun evening so I still give the game a thumbs up, but if “meh” was an option I’d give it a solid meh. With better puzzle design the Wolf Escape Games folks could have a real winner on their hands, as the production values are great and the software seems very solid.
Escape the Ancient Ruins - Online CompetitionRaid the Room - OnlineEscape roomVirtual Note: I can’t speak to the “competition” aspect of this room. We played it as part of some sort of contest but I do not know who won or anything like that. I am just reviewing it as an online escape room (ish) experience. We played as a team of 4; good friends who have done many in-person rooms together. I think that the platform provides enough communication options (including video/live chat and text chat) that coordinating the group is not really a problem. You get a little tutorial with the GM at the beginning, which is useful as a couple of key aspects of the platform pertaining to object manipulation and “ghosting” through other players’ avatars do need a bit of explaining and practice “off the clock” as it were. All in all the platform is okay: you can zoom in/out, there was no appreciable lag, etc. It seems to force the designers to put a lot of text/instructions directly into the game world as writing on the floor. This is probably not ideal for immersiveness but it does the job. Each avatar can carry one object at a time and it did not seem possible to accidentally permanently destroy anything critical. So all in all I thought the platform was fine. If the original NES Legend of Zelda were an online escape room it would look approximately like this. (It’s dangerous to go alone.) As for the specific puzzles on this quest, they were … okay. I found the variety of puzzles to be good enough (all distinct) but the puzzles themselves were more like pencil and paper logic puzzles translated to the online format, for the most part. One puzzle did make good use of the ability to interact with NPCs and another puzzle was a good test of the group’s communication and coordination skills. We finished in about 45 minutes which seemed like it would be about average. There was essentially no story overall. One or two puzzles had a little bit of a frame within that room but nothing really connected to anything outside of its room. I suppose we did “escape the ancient ruins” but I am not even sure why we needed to escape the ancient ruins in the first place. So, it was about on par with any mediocre live escape room in that regard. I won’t describe or comment on specific puzzles as I believe the competition is still live. Would I play another game on this specific online platform, sure. Would I recommend this particular game as a good online escape room experience, not really. YMMV
Pharaoh's TombWolf Escape Games-OnlineEscape roomVirtual We have played and enjoyed the three previous online games from Wolf Escape Games, and Pharaoh’s Tomb delivers basically more of the same. The graphics are good, the voice acting is fine, the “backpack” system works really well for letting the whole team examine key documents, and the puzzles are mediocre. My only real complaint is that the ending makes almost no sense and introduces a cliche of the Sherlock Holmes homage genre that really does not seem earned by the story. You’ll know it when you get to it. But, for 90 minutes of decent fun that you don’t have to get off the couch for and works really well screencasted to your big-screen TV, I can hardly complain. We’ll keep playing ‘em as long as Wolf Escape keeps making ‘em.
