Mr. Toad's Wild Escape

The size and amount of puzzles makes this a good room for small groups. One puzzle in particular was unintuitive and we needed a bit of hand-holding by the gm for it, which led us to confuse a later tech issue for another unintuitive puzzle. Gms were really nice and stopped the clock while fixing the issue. The gameplay was a little confusing- we solved the room without using some of the elements we discovered. Atmosphere was charming and a little “campy.” Bring at least two phones with full battery as you’ll need them for puzzles and also as flashlights.

This room is frustrating close to being great. They made a unique cool environment to play in, but built it shoddily, with lots of exposed electrical tape and and other hardware. They keep it dimly lit. Partly I believe to hide this. But since so much of the game involves searching, this adds difficulty without adding fun. Use of tech was weirdly inconsistent. Several puzzles and reveals had audio played on speakers in the room, but one puzzle required you to scan QR codes with your phone that link to audio files on the web. And this is for sounds that animals in the woods are making! Thematically makes no sense. A case of finding out they could and not thinking if they should. The core of a great game is here, but it needs more polish and more thought about design decisions. Honestly the most fun we had from this game was in the conversation about hot to fix it afterwards.

This is a difficult room to rate. It’s TRYING something different with the theme and aesthetic. I really don’t want to knock them for this effort. But… There are just too many buts. They had a couple clever Gen 2 puzzles, BUT they mixed them in with a bunch of Gen 1 word and number solves. They had a unique, trippy, handcrafted environment, BUT there were so many exposed wires, nails, and unfinished bits that the immersion and charm were destroyed. Some puzzles had unique solves, BUT they were so fiddly that we were left questioning our right answers. It’s a valiant effort, but they need to up their game as the industry evolves. With more polish and more tech, they could have a game that is a worthy addition to the modern escape room canon.