Lilies and Dust

We did this pop up escape room from this year’s Sydney Fringe Festival. Overall it was a fantastic experience. We were a 4 person group and the recommended player count is minimum 3 people. I agree, as there’s A LOT of puzzle to complete. We were surprised by the sheer amount of puzzles presented. Here’s a breakdown (in my opinion) 1. Hint system 4/5: PROS: As mentioned on their booking page, you have live interaction with (a rather friendly) death/ grim reaper (played by the creator). Live Interaction for puzzle progression and hints. Hints were rather tastefully done CON: Although I thoroughly enjoyed interacting with “Death” not everyone likes live interaction throughout the whole experience. I usually don’t like someone sitting in through the whole experience BUT “Death” was good at staying out of your way when you’re doing fine. 2. Immersion 5/5: -For a pop up, the props, character costuming and puzzle immersion quality was rather exceptional. 3.Build Quality 4/5: - All the aesthetics of the build and props were all sourced and set up by the one creator. So considering the temporary nature, it was great. It was in a nice, quaint location too. 4. Story flow 3/5: - A multi linear room can sometimes lack good story flow. It wasn’t all that easy to follow and didn’t know how it connected to the greater picture. - There were moments that felt a little unintuitive and/or repetitive but overall a unique and interesting theme and base story was intriguing! 5. Theming 5/5: Very unique theming and well executed from costuming to props and even the written clues were done thematically. 5. Puzzle quality 3.5/5 - Couple of the puzzles felt repetitive and due to the temporary nature of this room it’s understandable why some puzzles are clunky. Overall this pop up exceeded my expectations, I’ve seen regular rooms that didn’t place as much this in attention to detail of props, set up, puzzles, story etc. One issue some might have is that you will need English outside knowledge (not common knowledge).