Escape the Ancient Ruins - Online Competition

A very fun, cute, and clever experience. The multiplayer/cooperative stuff is very well-implemented, and the puzzles are satisfying and varied. I’m very excited to see what this team comes up with next!

What a cute game! Its creative use of 2D JRPG gaming elicits Zelda or even Pokémon. What a clever way to build atop Gather's platform and bring a well-designed escape room experience that leverages teamwork as the key to solving everything. Great use of multi-player elements, puzzles that felt just right, and fantastic in-game mechanics that help emulate what a team would do in a real-life (physical) escape room.

Such a cute cozy Zelda inspired theme. Good controls and smooth design. Great overlap with gamers and puzzle enjoyers would highly recommend for those that want to get a group together and do a little competition or just have a good time enjoying an escape room with friends!

Wasn’t sure what to expect, but we loved it! We played as a group of 5 and the online interface worked surprisingly well—no technical glitches at all. Creating custom avatars was a fun touch, even if it didn’t affect gameplay. The platform includes video/chat features so everyone can play in different locations. The room is made up of five mini-puzzles, each with a different style. I enjoyed it more than some physical puzzle boxes we’ve done because everyone can see the same information at the same time instead of passing components around. Our only complaint (if you can call it that) is that it ended a bit quickly (30–40 minutes) but we’re a group of seasoned puzzle solvers :-) Tip: You can use your mouse to zoom out. Didn't realize this until the 4th puzzle!

Love the platform's retro game style. It is oddly charming being able to customize your avatar. The puzzles were a lot more interactive than I thought they could be, but this is probably as close to mirroring a real life ER experience as possible. Would love to see more games from this company.

Really different types of puzzling made this a fun and surprising experience with friends in different locations. The retro sprites and movement made it feel like a hybrid escape room-video game.

Fun, retro art style and familiar puzzle interfaces that still needed collaboration and conversation to solve effectively.

It was very different but fun. As someone who never plays video games I had a long learning curve for how to control things inside the game. I was playing with my regular in person escape room friends and while we took a while to finish, it was still a fun experience

Note: I can’t speak to the “competition” aspect of this room. We played it as part of some sort of contest but I do not know who won or anything like that. I am just reviewing it as an online escape room (ish) experience. We played as a team of 4; good friends who have done many in-person rooms together. I think that the platform provides enough communication options (including video/live chat and text chat) that coordinating the group is not really a problem. You get a little tutorial with the GM at the beginning, which is useful as a couple of key aspects of the platform pertaining to object manipulation and “ghosting” through other players’ avatars do need a bit of explaining and practice “off the clock” as it were. All in all the platform is okay: you can zoom in/out, there was no appreciable lag, etc. It seems to force the designers to put a lot of text/instructions directly into the game world as writing on the floor. This is probably not ideal for immersiveness but it does the job. Each avatar can carry one object at a time and it did not seem possible to accidentally permanently destroy anything critical. So all in all I thought the platform was fine. If the original NES Legend of Zelda were an online escape room it would look approximately like this. (It’s dangerous to go alone.) As for the specific puzzles on this quest, they were … okay. I found the variety of puzzles to be good enough (all distinct) but the puzzles themselves were more like pencil and paper logic puzzles translated to the online format, for the most part. One puzzle did make good use of the ability to interact with NPCs and another puzzle was a good test of the group’s communication and coordination skills. We finished in about 45 minutes which seemed like it would be about average. There was essentially no story overall. One or two puzzles had a little bit of a frame within that room but nothing really connected to anything outside of its room. I suppose we did “escape the ancient ruins” but I am not even sure why we needed to escape the ancient ruins in the first place. So, it was about on par with any mediocre live escape room in that regard. I won’t describe or comment on specific puzzles as I believe the competition is still live. Would I play another game on this specific online platform, sure. Would I recommend this particular game as a good online escape room experience, not really. YMMV

This was a lot of fun and very collaborative! The animation and sprites are adorable, and really lend a lot to the overall experience. Morty rates this a medium, and I think that's right on the money. The puzzles are just challenging enough that, for those who haven't PC gamed or done any virtual escape rooms, you can get your sea legs in a new environment and be an active participant right out of the gate. It's hard to find unhosted virtual rooms that are good for all skill levels, self-contained to the point that you don't need a notepad and multiple windows/tabs open, and are really beautiful and nostalgic! I highly recommend this room as long as you don't beat my team's time (please).