Yet again, Puzzled has knocked it out of the park!
Going Up is possibly the best escape room I've played in the last year, certainly my favourite UK room. The storyline is wonderfully fun and cheesy, whilst keeping a sense of urgency and seriousness to it, it's light-hearted and enjoyable, and somehow still managed to get our hearts racing and blood pumping. Kevin, the owner of Puzzled and (pretty much) sole creator of this room, has very clearly poured his heart and soul into this room, along with what I can only assume is every single waking hour of the last two years. The amount of 'wow' moments in this hour astounded me, usually it's nice if a room has one cool moment, for example, a secret door opens up, something pops out of nowhere, something personalised to the player happens, but they've made it so that every time you think that moment has had its time to shine, there's another one just around the corner. With no spoilers, things disappear, move, explode, light up, shake, open, get physically interacted with, and so much more, in ways I haven't seen done in rooms before.
Don't get me started on the amount of custom assets in the room, I'm incredibly jealous of everyone who managed to snag a DASA patch, because that is a thing of beauty. Inside the room, there are so many lovely, purpose built props, with embossed logos, decals and stunning little details that really helps with the immersion, as if it needed it!
I've said it for both other rooms at Puzzled, but the sound design is again a stand-out feature. Seamlessly flowing into the narrative, keeping the vibe as tense or relaxed as is required in the moment. It's not advertised, but it needs to be known that Kevin has built a fully customisable sound board for the rooms, that the GMs can control while your in there to match the pace your game is running at, which is pure genius, and more people need to incorporate. Sound design, for me, is just as, if not more, important than the puzzles themselves. If I feel the immersion isn't holding up to a decent standard, I start to enjoy everything else a bit less, and the team here have nailed every aspect of immersion.
Obviously every room has teething issues in its first few months, and I had expected a whole lot more of them than I found, we only had two issues, a buffering video screen right at the end, and an ever so slightly dodgy power connection of an already novel prop.
I've gone on far too long, but I could talk about this room for hours, and will, to everyone I see. Thank you Puzzled, this game is amazing, and I'll no doubt play again in a year or so to see how it is going, hopefully 'up' still ;)
perfect sound design, immaculate set, wondeful all round.
Reece and Kevin, as always, were gems.
Particularly interesting or different
Yes
The gameplay takes things you may have seen before, but uses them in ways you haven't.
Solid plot, nothing overly new, but very well integrated to the game
High tech is an understatement. It is the pinnacle of techy rooms.
maybe more than two for the game as a whole, but for peak immersion, 2 is ideal.
The only scary thing is the sheer amount of building hours that have been put into this room. Damn Puzzled team, working over time?
nothing of mature nature, just a lovely game I would love for sticky fingers to stay away from.
Physically active
Somewhat
a little bit of crawling needed by at least one member of the team.
Accessibility
One aspect of crawling for a player, the whole room is slightly raised up.
Even the parts that felt dangerous story wise, felt incredibly safe for us as players.
