Mad Scientist

Our first look at the room left us less than impressed. It’s one small room, and not very well decorated. Lots of plain white wall space. Not much in the way of decorations or props that add to the room’s atmosphere. Very unimpressive and not very aesthetically appealing. You definitely need some prior “general knowledge” to solve one of the puzzles—and if you don’t get this puzzle right you can’t move on in the game—but you don’t know this until it’s too late. It seems as though you can work other puzzles and come back to this one, but it doesn’t work that way. And I say that it seems as though you can move on because it’s not clear as to if some of the materials are still missing or not at this point. One of the most frustrating things is that the first set of items you find could go one of two places—and there is nothing at all to distinctly designate the correct placement of these objects. There are four items and two different places that holds exactly 4 items of the same shape and size—and if you guess incorrectly and put them in the wrong place like we did then it’s very difficult to get the items out of the wrong place so that you can then put them into the right place. And if you don’t know the answer to one of the questions asked that distinguishes which item you use then you are stuck there because it doesn’t work if you have one of the “general knowledge” answers incorrect. After doing nearly 50 rooms, I have come to expect that all knowledge you need to solve a puzzle generally can be found in the room—but not in this room! I suggested that they put up some posters or leave a book or flyer or something to help answer the questions in case you were unsure of an answer. We were sure we were right and spent 15 minutes trying to move on before we discovered that one of our answers was incorrect. But was it?? The way the question was worded was extremely misleading. And this brings me to the next disappointing aspect of this room—you can’t get a clue unless you stop what you are doing and dial a phone—and then the only person who can hear the clue when it is given is the one holding the phone. Why would you not install a speaker system or at least use a walkie-talkie so everyone can hear the clue? So we were stuck in one place for an exorbitant amount of time until we stopped, dialed a phone, and finally got the information that one of our answers was incorrect and we were not moving on until we fixed it. Also, I say “general knowledge” because one could argue that the questions that must be answered are not necessarily something everyone is going to know. The game master even told us that another person “got angry” with them because he didn’t believe that the questions that were asked were something everyone would know. I would agree with him. My husband and I are intelligent, educated, fairly knowledgeable folks, but we got stuck here on one question and it cost us enough time that we did not escape. There is also a puzzle that presents like a math problem (algebraic equations) but is not SOLVED like an algebraic equation. We never did exactly figure out exactly what they wanted us to do. It was supposed to spell out numbers but it did not exactly do that and we only got the numbers we needed by purely guessing and filling in the blanks. Lastly, there were a couple of items that were used that neither of us knew how to use and there was nothing in the room to direct us on how to utilize these items. For one of the items there was a photo of it on the wall which we thought we were supposed to use but then later on you get the actual item to use. The way we thought it was used based on the photo is distinctly different than it is actually used, which became clear once we had the physical item in our hands. The room, in addition to lacking aesthetic qualities, was frustrating and misleading. It’s not fun when nothing makes sense, it’s not clear where items belong and you have to waste time trying to retrieve them to try again, and you have to stop and dial a phone every time you have a question.