Starship Libra

Starship Libra is a spaceship-themed room that gave us a lot of frustration. I enjoyed the theme, but it was so dark in the room that we missed a tiny item that was necessary to get started, even after two people searching in the same spot. For one puzzle, we never quite understood the instructions, but we seemed to luck into a solution. For another, getting an accurate measurement from an item was required; however, the location on the item was so vague that we kept getting the wrong number. The GM had to step in eventually and give us the right one because the prop was so unclear. With a little tweaking, this could be a fantastic room. Just a touch too sloppy to be satisfying.

This room was frustrating. Upon walking in you are greeted with a wall full of old tech that is your command console. This is fine but there were a lot of red-herrings including screens with options that could be changed and a bunch of connection cables on the table and in slots that go completely unused. A lot of the puzzles felt like scavenger hunts... But they felt even worse because they required careful listening of Captain's logs to pick out very specific details and required abstraction to match them to a puzzle or lock. The videos were frustrating to watch repeatedly because he spoke slowly. You had to pick out minute details and remember them because you couldn't fast forward or rewind. The puzzles did not feel like they were integrated into the story well; they felt like they were puzzles just for the sake of being puzzles, and they were hard just for the sake of being hard (via abstraction). My partner and I escaped this room while completely missing some puzzles simply because we happened to use a different clue for a different puzzle and got something right. The last room was extremely frustrating because we were looking around it looking for puzzles only to find out that all we had to do was open the last door. The last room was decorated according to the theme and included TWO doors. The GM kind of taunted us when we got out about how close we cut it to the time limit but we were reeling over how utterly confused that room left us. When we saw the solutions for the puzzles we skipped, we got even more frustrated thinking about it.

Did this room is its very beginning so a lot of things wernt working properly

okay i’m rating this as a dislike because so much of this room is being a good scavenger hunter. random objects and keys hidden in the room with less brain power for solving puzzles. there was one puzzle that needed a key we found initially but opened more than one lock so we didn’t end up using it on the right box and that threw off our game from the get go. halfway thru our gm realized we didn’t do the most impt puzzle and redirected us (don’t think they were paying attention to what we were doing). great design and concept, just needs more clarity regarding how the game should be played or more instruction prior to groups starting.

Needle in a haystack scavenger hunts made for a frustrating beginning to this room. I am learning that with non-linear rooms when it is clear which clues go with which puzzles it flows better. Libra has the elements for a great room; suggest playtesting and incorporating that feedback to improve the room.