竹本家

What could be more Taiwanese than a bubble tea-themed escape room? This was another outstanding experience from Stupid Particle, who really excel in thematic puzzles coupled with layered storytelling and a mystery at the heart of the narrative. Unfortunately, being able to understand and read Chinese is essential for this room, as it contains a vast amount of reading, video, and audio, as well as interactions with the GM via walkie talkie. It’s also a rare room where you’re not only allowed to bring in a phone but are required to in order to complete the game. Only 2 of our 5 team members were able to read Chinese properly, but only one could comprehend the fast-paced audio (me!), so we really struggled and only managed to escape with 30 seconds left on the clock. Apparently even local teams have trouble completing the room in time, so it’s definitely a challenge. Accordingly, even though I highly recommend this room, you would need to be fluent in Chinese or have at least 2 team members who are in order to play it.

Optimistically tried this room with 3 people (1 native Chinese speaker, 1 American born Chinese speaker with limited reading skills, and 1 non-Chinese speaker), but unfortunately there was just too much reading in Chinese for us to complete the room in time. The puzzles themselves weren’t too difficult and the concept was fun. 3 people was definitely enough for the room, but if just one more of us read Chinese competently, we would’ve made it. Maybe not the room for foreigners with limited Chinese, but still a fun room for natives!

This game was a fun one, even if I struggled with my friends having to translate for me because my Mandarin is very bad. Great theme, good puzzles, fun technical elements, and the number of puzzles is right for the amount of time they give you. We finished in the last couple of minutes with 4 players. (Do not attempt to play this game without at least two fluent Mandarin speakers. There is a lot of written and spoken Mandarin necessary to solve the puzzles and understand the story.)