Escape from The Runaway Train

I understand why Runaway Train, and the Nine Rooms series overall, can be quite polarizing for Western escape room players, but holy shit, this game is an absolute masterpiece of puzzle design. They've found some brilliant ways to turn narrative setup into puzzle setup, even if this experience isn't about an emotional story, special effects, or a jaw-dropping set (though the set was quite nice!) To fully experience this brilliance, though, you do need to properly experience the ending... which I think most international teams only get partway through. If at first you fail, think through what questions the situation is presented, go back through all the information you've been presented with, and you might just encounter a sequence of sublime ahas. In this style, there's truly no shame in taking the "revenge ticket" nor is that model intended to rip you off. It's setting you up to truly earn the win, and also have beautiful and meaningful failures along the way.

This for us unfortunately was the most frustrating experience we have ever had. The first and only experience we have ever walked out of. Starting with the pros because they are very limited, the set design does look and feel like you’re on a train, and the staff were accomodating to make sure you understood rules in English, but the rest of the experience was horrible. 1. This is not an escape room, I would call it a puzzle experience but it is clearly designed to make as much money as possible. They do this by taking online bookings, as well as walk ins and cramming as many people as possible in. This means long wait times prior to the game (we waited almost 45 minutes despite having a booking slot at 3pm. This is not disclosed on the website that you also have to wait with walk ins). It also means you are stuck waiting for the groups in front of you to get out. We spent almost 90 minutes in here and still walked out with 30 minutes left on our official timer. 2. The puzzles in this room were sometimes good, but often totally illogical. Some of them we guessed by pure luck and then when we had time to wait, would try and figure out who we were actually supposed to solve it. Often times we resulted to the clue book so we could try and make it through to the next room, only to be left waiting and still know idea how the puzzles were designed to be played. 3. We didn’t make it to the final space but it’s so clearly a scam to make money. “Only a 10% pass rate” but you can pay extra to try again. Absolutely ridiculous way to design a game. Fair enough if you want to challenge players but don’t make it into a money making ploy. Overall, I would not visit this establishment again. Unless you would like to waste your money and spend 60 minutes in a room waiting for the people ahead of you to finish. Go out and explore Tokyo instead and you’ll have a way better experience. This was a 0/10 experience.

We did this new nine-experience right after The Escape from the Witch’s House in the Woods and were split about which one was better. My older son preferred the use of the magic wands and aesthetics of Witch, while my younger son preferred the puzzles and props of Train. I was more split down the middle for specific reasons. On the plus side, the provision of the hint book rather than arbitrarily providing tips at fixed intervals made the experience smoother and feel less cash-grabby. On the minus side, the outside noise again proved annoying, there was one room with a faulty puzzle that required staff assistance (we were informed of this in advance), and we were unfortunately stuck behind some very slow groups ahead of us, stretching out our 50-minute experience by an extra 35 minutes. This really highlights the major flaw of this design, especially as we already waited a long time just to get into the first room. Luck can really make or break your experience.

8.5/10 Amazing, unique, very difficult!

Coming from overseas and having played some incredibly cinematic escape room games, SCRAP’s ‘Escape from the Runaway Train’ lands more as a puzzle room with thematic puzzles. Some of those puzzles are fun, to be sure, but the experience is slightly impacted by the business choice to prioritise throughput over player experience. The lack of a heart, like, or dislike rating in this review is intentional—it is a mixed bag and worth unpacking in words. The puzzles are as you’d expect from SCRAP; clever, witty wordplay, lateral thinking and a behemoth meta-puzzle for the final challenge form the core of SCRAP’s experiences, and ‘…Runaway Train’ is no exception. We were stumped by a few and the final room feels as if it was designed to almost certainly ensure players require the additional ¥1000/player for 10 minutes and hints to complete the final room. Most answers are inputted as words into an iPad aside from a couple of combination locks. Aside from a few novel presentations of puzzles, the standout experience was witnessing the game master act the opening moments of ‘…Runaway Train’. More game masters should adopt this approach to inducting players—it is far more compelling than the standard scenario read-out. If you finish a room quickly, you cannot advance to the next one unless the team ahead of you has also moved on. Your timer will pause, but this means that the 50 minute experience could balloon out to 70 minutes due to the time spent waiting for the teams ahead of you to progress or bow out. We certainly benefitted from SCRAP’s new hint book system, as their ‘nine-room’ games only give you a hint every 2 or so minutes via the game tablet, whereas the book can be used immediately without a time penalty. Given that the final room doesn’t have any hints the first time you play, and that the amount of time you have remaining is reduced to a maximum of 10 minutes irrespective of the fact you may have had more time when you entered the room, the book offers a better experience for players. Their other room, ‘Escape from the Witch’s House in the Woods’, sorely needs this hint book system. It’s an interesting experience for international escape room players, particularly given SCRAP’s involvement in pioneering the escape room format. While the international design shift appears to be firmly directed towards immersive, cinematic narratives and player agency in escape experiences, SCRAP continues to carve and refine their puzzle-forward niche.

I disliked immensely that you had to wait such a long time to ask for help in each room. It means if you get stuck right away you just stand around burning time and losing time available for later rooms.

We played it in english without any issues. The GMs are helpful and you play with a tablet in english. I liked the game as a whole, like many others mention, to solve the last wagon you should be prepared to pay 1000 yen for a replay card that gives you 10m and the hints. Either that or you need to be an expert who pays attention to everything. The props were nice and i saw a few unique puzzles that i havent seen before or thought of. In this sense it was a great room and i recommend it for anyone passing by in Tokyo :)

Good Points: Some puzzles are nice and semi-novel and the pace is fast. Bad Points: They employ predatory tactics to make you pay more than the base price. In particular the last room could be an escape room (an easy and fast one ok) in itself. There are at least 3 times the number of puzzles of the other rooms. You have only 10 mins and, the first time, without hints. If you pay extra you can get additional time and retry, with hints, the last room.

This should only be undertaken if you are okay with missing out some of the end. It only has about a 10% completion rate and the final room has a ridiculous number of steps involved.

Can be done in English but we personally found a bit frustrating and would recommend Escape from the Witches House in the woods first.