Ruins: Forbidden Treasure

we brought our first timer friends with us to this one and they fell in love. a lot to do and a lot of unique puzzles in this entry. some puzzles needed a bit of nudging to fully understand as some of the puzzles were difficult to perceive without written explanation, but other than that, the immersion in this game felt very authentic and i enjoyed playing it!

This room was pretty cool, but our experience was "Ruined" by buggy puzzles. The room was new-ish at the time and they still had some kinks to work out. Unfortunately, this really dampened our experience. I'm not sure we really escaped (GM gave us extra time, too), but I don't think we could've fully escaped because the final puzzle wasn't registering our correct solution. This was a large set with really nice decor and ambience. Some puzzles were really a challenge, too. It's a really great room if it worked properly. This was also the only time we've ever had random people join our group (such is the non-private policy of Escape Game). They definitely helped us, but no one could've solved broken puzzles (but it increased the amount of frustration in the room lol)

The lighting in this room made it difficult to see puzzles/colors in this room.

Was disappointed to see the best chain dip in quality like this. While the set design is amazing it seems like the puzzles must not have translated from the original a Nashville version logically. One puzzle in particular required you to dismantle it after correctly completing it which goes against good game play logic. Not intuitive or logical at all. Very disappointed.

The look and design of this room don’t cover up some of the serious flaws in several puzzles. I wanted to like this game a lot, but too many issues with logic, using items multiple times, and convoluted puzzles force my hand for a thumbs down.

I don’t know the next time I’ll have the chance to make it to Tennessee to play the proper version of Ruins, but I imagine this is as good as it gets. Yet another fantastic game from TEG. If my only complaint is that I wish it were longer, then I think there are not really much of anything to complain about.