Il Laboratorio di Frankenstein Jr. [The Laboratory of Frankenstein Jr.]

I like the setting. Whole game has a such a great vibe! Almost like being in the film. Huge heads down for the game master! Great fun overall!

I really liked Frankenstein Jr. It managed to do a lot with a little - mostly, I think, due to a GM that was both extremely diligent and extremely talented. Frankenstein Jr. is themed after the Mel Brooks movie Young Frankenstein (the title was translated into Italian as “Frankenstein Jr.”). I didn’t realize that in advance, but it’s full of jokes and references. It does have a few moments designed to startle you, but it wasn’t at all scary and those moments were mostly quite funny immediately after they had passed. The game is playable in English, though you should confirm on WhatsApp before booking as I think it may depend on staffing. Not everything is translated into English - there are a few printed/laminated sheets with instructions that were fully translated, but any labels on objects in the room remained in Italian. Most of the words are similar enough to their English words that it shouldn’t be problematic, and I suspect that the GM would help if (e.g.) you didn’t know Italian numbers. In my opinion, this room punches above its weight class. When we got a look at the GM console after the game, it was clear that rather than automating everything or wiring up Arduinos or whatever, Cogito Ergo Room often relied on the GM to manually trigger certain things that couldn’t be automated, including triggering sound cues when we solved something. I’ve seen this go poorly in the past, but here it was seamless and effective. We were never left wondering if we had correctly solved a puzzle. This also meant that he could compensate when a puzzle wasn’t quite working correctly (there were a few that seemed a little flaky) Similarly, the set did not feel like it was produced on, say, a Disney budget, but still had a ton of really good detail work. There was a really well done fireplace effect that I quite liked, and I noticed a lot of small things like weathering on the air conditioning unit. In addition to effectively running the game, our GM also intermittently joined us in the room, acting as Igor (“eye-gore”), either for story moments or to make sure that a mechanism was working correctly. He told us afterwards that it was only the second time he had done the room in English instead of Italian and I was shocked. He was in-character, funny, responsive, attentive, and entertaining the entire time. (I wish I remembered his name to give him credit!) The game had a good story arc, with tension increasing as you get towards the end (again, helped by Igor). There was a good balance of puzzles of manageable difficulty. Overall, I would definitely recommend Frankenstein Jr. if you’re in Rome and have some extra time. I was not disappointed.