Jungle 2: The Next Dimension

I always appreciate reviews such as this as when we try to add mechanics to our games it is great to get feedback such as this. There is a lot to unpack here so I'll try to comment on what I feel is appropriate. We have noticed our primary audience remains to be guests who are newer to escape rooms. The claim that we put things into the game to suck time is surely not the intent. Including simpler tasks in this game allows larger groups to have more players feel as though they are making an impact in the game. The stronger players gravitate to the more challenging tasks allowing the less confident players to make impacts elsewhere. And the general feedback we get is that a lot more people in our large groups say to us "I did a lot more than I normally get to do". The one repeatable task you didn't seem to like has been one that many guests have enjoyed doing. But we will continue to monitor to see if that stops being the case. This game does have higher amount of skill based tasks than we normally include but we felt it fits the vibe better and allows more interaction. But maybe skill based tasks in escape rooms is not your thing. We didn't include them as "time sucks" we put a lot of time and thought into how they work to make sure they are fun and not overly frustrating. I can understand the frustration of the game not letting you do anything while it's talking to you. The majority of these interludes do not lock the game out from you continuing. But I can certainly look into speeding them up if it's truly needed. Not a single one takes longer than 60 seconds and most are 15-20 seconds and the games programming does allow all puzzles to remain functional. There are a total of 3 story interludes that do lock up gameplay. We felt those were needed breaks that help guide the player through the unique gameplay. Without them we found players do not use the main set pieces as designed and get easily lost on what to do next. Regardless I apologize you didn't like our joke fake out that occurs halfway through. But I assure you it only takes 15 seconds to run through that part of the game. I will look into if there is anything we can do to speed that up. Regarding our "Expected Progress" and "Actual" progress. I again apologize if this mechanic was not for you. We found this has greatly improved our less seasoned escape room players overall experience in all of our games. We found way too many teams convince themselves they are making good progress, only to find out that they underestimate the amount of time needed to complete the room. The "arbitrary" percent increases are infact not arbitrary and are based on the average time it takes groups to solve the puzzles in at each stage of the game. This can make it feel arbitrary if your group does puzzles faster or slower than our average groups. We experimented with calling the "Expected Progress" other things but this naming scheme conveyed more clearly what we wanted. The goal is that most groups use up all 60 minutes. This is unfortunately impossible to achieve with every group. But regardless I appreciate the feedback and I will look into speeding up things where we can. I would love to also speak over the phone too because it sounds like you have a great eye for what works and what doesn't. If it's not too much trouble to chat I would love to talk more. Call the store at 860-925-6800 and as for Nick (Owner of Puzzle Theory)

Replied Aug 5, 2024