Finalist (2025)

Nominee (2024)

Finalist (2023)

Finalist (2022)

A strange event has caused the closure of the village chapel. The Vatican has sent its experts to discover the truth of what happened in order to decide whether to close it definitively and declare it a 'non-sacred place' . The neighbors, terrified, full of horror whisper that everything has been due to some demonic events. Are the rumors true? Overcome your fears and dare to live the experience.

Red Dopamine

Awaken

Escape room

Half escape room, half haunt, this Exorcist-inspired room is the best horror experience we've had so far. It is a genuinely scary and sometimes uncomfortable haunt. On top of it, it's actually a good escape room with a good mix of logical and observational puzzles.

I will talk about the Terror version since that is what we played, but if you do not like horror experiences, there are 2 other modes that gradually dial down the horror to zero(Mystery - less horror, and Adventure - no horror). The Adventure version even has a few more puzzles. However, it is obvious that the escape room was designed with the Terror version primarily in mind.

You are emissaries from the Vatican sent to the chapel of Saint Thomas to dispose of the Codex Maleficarum, a cursed tome. Unfortunately, the tome has already possessed a girl named Emily, who now haunts the chapel in her nightgown and long hair that covers her face. Your host in the chapel is quickly dispatched by Emily, but not before she explains the rules: Emily is drawn to light, so to make her go away, you need to close off your lamp and stay in the dark, in the style of the video game Amnesia.

The room is part of a series of Barcelona rooms that put such an emphasis on immersion that they even employ a self check-in style of welcome. You are thrown directly into the atmosphere and even an administrative task such as paying for the escape room is framed as "leaving an offering for the chapel". The immersion is never broken from the moment you enter to the moment the experience ends.

The real estate here is impressive, easily 100 m2 or more of play area over two levels, made even more impressive by the fact that it is padded with secret corridors which the GM who plays Emily uses to navigate and attack you, sometimes even from two different angles of the same room.

There are 2 especially memorable rooms. The first is the main chapel room with the confessional where you start the game: it features the introduction to Emily (who only startles you but does not attack you at this point) and my favorite puzzle because of how well it's tied to the theme: you have to map chronological events in the life of Jesus Christ to some paintings on the wall but without being told so explicitly. 

The other great room is the catacombs room on the lower level for the sheer horror aspect: it is pitch dark so you have to use your lamp (with a trembling finger on the off button) to figure out the Knights Templar puzzle here. The puzzle itself is relatively simple but the tension of the room makes it difficult. It is the room where Emily is the most aggressive, which solidifies it psychologically as the "dangerous room". This comes beautifully into play later when one of the players is instructed to come back to this area to fill a vial from the blood fountain. The Sunshine Piglet drew the proverbial short stick and was forced to face Emily and the darkness alone. Apparently, the confrontation was spectacular although all I could hear from above were screams. 😰

The bedroom area is good but I didn't feel the puzzles integrated that well into the setting (the clock puzzle and the typewriter puzzle, the latter of which stumped us as we simply did not notice the typewriter in the room) probably because cryptic activations make more sense story-wise when they are part of an ancient secret place like the chapel, and not so much when they are part of a modern place with modern objects like the living quarters.

The final room is also good and it is clever how you are guided to it with a combination of lighting and scares. It is strange, though, that the intro talks about the 4 relics you have to collect in order to sanctify the codex, but they play a very small role as pieces scattered in the final room, and they are not even involved in the final puzzle but rather the second-to-final puzzle. Instead, the final puzzle involves some pieces of wood which ARE scattered throughout the entire play area. I would make the room more focused: the final puzzle would be gathering the relics for sanctifying the codex which are scattered throughout the entire play area (and you can gather them in advance if you paid attention to the intro) in return for which you would immediately get the incantation to exorcize Emily.

And it would be amiss to not mention the 2 GMs which worked very hard to make this an authentic and awesome experience. Thank you! 

If you are a horror room fan visiting Barcelona, this room is a must!

Apparently the full scare mode includes a lot of annoying screaming (Which isn't scary... just annoying). So, I'm very glad we played mystery mode here.
This, however, pales in comparison to Achijira, one of my favorite games in the city.
Play both with Awaken first, if you can. But if you can only play 2, play Achijira!

One of the best horror escape rooms I've been too, you get into action right from the start, puzzles are clever, the scenery is nice and some parts are truly spooky.

Awaken

Red Dopamine

Awards

Ratings

Reviews

VeganGameGuy

Gameplay

Atmosphere

Customer service

carlosemege

Gameplay

Atmosphere

Customer service

Particularly interesting or different

Story

Difficulty

Game tech

Ideal number of players

Scary

Minimum age

Was anything broken?

Live actors

Physically active

Easy to find location

BravePiglet