Mission Force: Spymaster Protocol

Riddlehouse promises a thrilling and intense 3rd-generation escape room with "Mission Force: Spymaster Protocol." The narrative framework is classic and atmospheric: we are tasked with infiltrating a notorious spy leader’s hotel room in a cold Eastern Europe and stealing his secrets before he returns. Unfortunately, the room's physical limitations and a highly linear design trip up what could have been a great secret agent experience. The room captures the Eastern European spy vibe decently, but the illusion cracks a bit right from the start. You are told that you need to use a specific briefcase to communicate with HQ – yet the briefcase is already placed inside the room. It would have provided far more immersion and that genuine agent-feeling if the team had been handed it prior to entering. Furthermore, the hotel room itself is very small. There were four of us, and we quickly found ourselves stepping on each other's toes. Unfortunately, the cramped space works against the feeling of a grand infiltration that we had hoped for. The gameplay suffers from being extremely linear, and there are generally very few puzzles to tackle – we counted fewer than 10 puzzles in total throughout the entire experience. Because the puzzles must be solved in a fixed order, with no alternative tracks to work on simultaneously, massive bottlenecks occur. All too often, we experienced that only one or two people were active, while the rest of the team stood passively waiting for something new to pop up that we could interact with. Additionally, you have to revisit previously used elements multiple times, which points to a room with limited content. Our recommendation is to not be more than 2 people in the room, considering both the physical space and the volume of puzzles. Riddlehouse bets heavily on electronic and digital elements here. Aside from a single manual combination lock, virtually all the puzzles are driven by electronics. Technically, it works fine, but it creates an unbalanced team dynamic. The large, concluding task in particular is designed as a pure one-man job. It took a long time to solve, which meant that three out of four participants essentially just stood around watching during the finale. Here, the designers should have split the elements up, forcing cooperation and communication to crack the code. Number of nuts (max 5) Difficulty level 🌰 Design 🌰🌰🌰 Scare factor Entertainment vs price 🌰🌰