The strongest of the three rooms at Seoul Escape Hongdae, ‘Venetian Merchant’ packs a few surprises and twists within its walls. As a part of their continuing ‘Season 2’ trans-room narrative of a time traveller chasing their father across the world, the ‘Venetian Merchant’ offers some interesting props and set pieces that make for a memorable experience. Playing this game after ‘Amazon’ made the room feel shorter by comparison, but that was also because the run of puzzles flowed relatively well with minimal disruptions or confusion. The narrative entices players to find out what happens next in the next escape game, and the idea that a narrative plays out over about 8 escape games is particularly intriguing. Unfortunately, the remaining ‘Season 2’ games no longer exist after COVID impacted majority of the English-friendly escape rooms in Seoul. While the set design isn’t as ambitious as ‘Amazon’, we didn’t feel the need—or fatigue—to request hints as much in ‘Venetian Merchant’, which ultimately makes this the better game. With that being said, it is recommended to play both as the ‘Amazon’ set is truly unique.

Cool room, nice theme, nice decoration. A little outdated and oldschool and some things not working soooo perfectly; you can tell that South Korea or atleast Seoul doesn‘t have that much of a Escape Room community, there‘s not too much competition and hence improvement going on here. But a good and solid room nonetheless. I think it‘s the better one of their rooms.

This was our first international escape room, and it was decent and fun! I would recommend it. There was one element that was quite unique that we hadn’t seen yet in all our prior 133 games. I will not spoil it because you have to see it for yourself.

Fun game with one pretty cool and unique element that’s worth the price of admission.

Fun room with a mixture of different puzzle types. Some neat moments and a few stale moments. Particularly loved the transition mid game but some of the “clues” were a little old-school.