Rock City Escape - Soup du Jour Review (The Netherlands)

 

Hi everyone

The third room on our May/June 2024 child-free trip to Holland was Soup du Jour at Rock City Escape in The Netherlands. Rock City Escape is located in Amersfoot, which from memory was about a 45 minute uber from Amsterdam. We took an uber because we were only heading out of the city for the one day (ie we managed to fit in a number of rooms around Amersfoot back to back), but hiring a car would have probably been a good option.

Rock City Escape is located in OLV ter Eemklooster (Our Beloved Lady of the Eem monastery). It’s a really cool location for an escape room. We met our ‘sister’ at one location and then, in character, she took us down various corridors until we found the restaurant where today’s soup du jour was to be served. The story of the room is that nuns have been disappearing from the monastery while at the same time, the popularity and reputation of a recently-opened restaurant, La Monastere, continues to grow.

Soup du Jour was my 293rd escape room and here is what I thought: 

• Soup du Jour started off very strong with the actor interaction as noted above;
• the setting for this room was pretty special – having a monastery-themed room located in an actual monastery was amazing. After we escaped, our kind GM gave us directions to a café on the monastery premises, which was really nice;
• Soup du Jour was quite unique in that it blended traditional escape room puzzles with video/cinematics. This was really cool. The puzzles themselves were really diverse and a lot of fun to solve; and
• other than the initial interaction with our GM before we went into the room, there was no other direct actor engagement. The room certainly had scary elements, with one moment of separation resulting in things being more scary for one particular player than the rest. It was not super scary though (more eerie with some jump scares).

I really enjoyed Soup du Jour. This room blended video/cinematics with a more traditional game incredibly well. No doubt it was really innovative when it opened back in 2021 and I can appreciate why it ranked #29 at the time on TERPECA. It has dropped back to #199 in 2024, but it still holds up I think. It was a great room in a phenomenal setting.


Where:                        Daam Fockemalaan 22, 3818 KG Amersfoot

Duration:                    75 minutes

Themes:                       3 themes

TERPECA:                  #199 in 2024 (formerly #29)

Price:                            155€ (for a team of 4)

Overall Rating:            A fun (and scary) blend of cinematics/tech in a real monastery

More details:                https://rockcityescape.nl/

Your Escape - The Non Believers Review (The Netherlands)

Hi everyone

The second room that we hit up during our May/June 2024 child-free trip to Holland was The Non Believers at Your Escape. Getting a booking for this room was VERY hard – in fact, we took half a day out to travel from Amsterdam down to Leiden just to play this room, only to head back to Leiden a couple of days later on our way down to The Hague. I had heard great things about this room so I moved everything around the booking, which was the only available time the week that we were there. And I am VERY glad I did.

The Non Believers is a dark story about a pastor and his family and a mystery surrounding what happened to them when they did not attend a Sunday service. The story reveals itself with each new chapter as players explore the family home.

The Non Believers was my 292nd room and here is what I thought: 

• as an experienced or inexperienced player, it would be very hard to not be very impressed with this room. The magic begins just moments into the game and it left a smile on my face for the whole duration of the game (and afterwards);
• our game master was awesome –clearly very passionate about the room and providing a fantastic experience for all players;
• The Non Believers was probably the first European room that I had played that was a true “top” room (ie a room that was both in the top 25 TERPECA rooms and was a room that I personally thought deserved its place there). I was blown away by what the designers and builders had achieved;
• my biggest lasting memory of The Non Believers was the sheer volume of misdirection and moving spaces that took place during our experience. There were so many wow moments I have lost count of just how many there were;
• another truly memorable aspect of The Non Believers was the pure scale of the experience – it was enormous with so many different areas to explore. Up until that point, I do not think I had played any rooms on the same scale (and certainly not with the same volume of moving spaces and wow moments). The room design was very clever, with spaces used incredibly well (including behind the scenes spaces);
• The Non Believers also had a huge number of puzzles – they were all challenging and really rewarding to solve. We were a team of 3 and we managed to escape well within our 120 minute window; and
• this room is pretty dark and whilst I did not think it was scary, it was pretty eerie with elements of low light. There were no actors chasing us at all in the space, so don’t be put off if you are a little hesitant about scary rooms.

In 2023, The Non Believers debuted at #12 on TERPECA. I think that was a well-deserved spot. In 2024 it dropped down a little to #25, but in my honest opinion it is better than a number of other rooms that currently sit above it on the TERPECA list. But hey, each to their own.

Where:                    Flevoweg 13, 23218 BZ, Leiden

Duration:                120 minutes

Themes:                   2 themes

TERPECA:              #25 in 2024 (formerly #12)

Price:                        229€ (for a team of 4)

Overall Rating:       Pure magic – an absolute must do room

More details:            https://your-escape.nl/

Logic Locks - The Amsterdam Catacombs Review (The Netherlands)

 

Hi everyone

In May/June 2024, my wife had a conference to attend in Bruges, Belgium. With a great deal of help from both sides of our families, we managed to turn that conference into a 2 week, child-free trip to Europe. I was particularly motivated to make it all happen when I looked up the TERPECA list of the world's best games and learned that Belgium and The Netherlands have so many of the best rooms in the world.

The planning phase was challenging, trying to fit in equal(ish) amounts of sightseeing and escape rooms. But I think we did ok, managing to fit in 22 of the world's best rooms in a little under 2 weeks (and we really did fit in a lot of sightseeing across Amsterdam, The Hague, Antwerp, Bruges and Brussels).

After being awake I think over 30 hours, we played The Amsterdam Catacombs by Logic Locks on the afternoon that we flew in. I would of course have preferred to have given ourselves a good night's sleep before we played, but you gotta do what you gotta do. The summary of The Amsterdam Catacombs is as follows:

Become the main character in this real-life horror experience. Explore the dark secrets of Amsterdam’s underground. Face your fears and investigate the evil that lurks in the Catacombs.

The Amsterdam Catacombs was my 291st room. Here is what I thought: 

• the location of this room is truly something else. The Catacombs game is set beneath an 1860s church, Posthoornkerk, which was designed by the same architect that designed Amsterdam Central Station and the Rijkmuseum. The church no longer holds religious services but can be hired, which is what Logic Locks has done. It is hard to beat this location for an ancient catacombs-themed room – it was phenomenal;
• the room is a horror-themed room but overall, I do not think it was super scary. I think it is more like 95% tension with some slightly scarier moments thrown in, but at no point are players chased or grabbed by actors;
• there is some nice actor engagement in this experience, which (in addition to the location) was the highlight of the experience for me. I really enjoyed engaging with the actors (and of course trying to make them break);
• the puzzles in the experience were all well done, involving hunt and seek fun as well as traditional puzzles. The downside of this location is the limitations imposed on Logic Locks on installing any permanent structures. However, they did very well within those confines, with the character engagement (particularly the ending, which was off the charts) made for a very memorable room;
• one downside I would say is that this room is quite expensive. We paid 183€ for our team of 3, which equates to just over $100AUD per player. If you read the following reviews from our European trip, you will see that particularly in Belgium and The Netherlands, games are typically charged at a flat rate for a team of 4 (ie whether you are a team of 2 or 3, you pay for 4).

I can see why this room debuted at #4 on the TERPECA best rooms list back in 2018. Equally, I can see why it has dropped down to #156 in 2024 – it is an amazing room that is really well done, but some of the newer rooms have now surpassed it. I would still highly recommend this room if you enjoy some fun actor engagement and a spooky/eerie room in a fantastic setting.

Where:                    Haarlemmerstraat 124-126 1013 EN Amsterdam

Duration:                90 minutes

Themes:                  2 themes

TERPECA:             #156 in 2024 (formerly #4)

Price:                      183€ (for a team of 3)

Overall Rating:      Great room in a phenomenal setting, starting to show its age

More details            https://www.logiclocks.com/

Paniq Room - Wizardry Review

 

Hi everyone

In March 2024, my wife and I took our girls back to Paniq Room at The Rocks in Sydney. Our first adventure at Paniq Room was back in February 2015, where my tenth ever escape room was their Supercell 117 room. We had so much fun in that room and we have had a lot of fun over the years playing all of their rooms.

My girls love a Harry Potter/wizard themed room so we decided to take them to play Wizardry on a rare weekend when we had some free time. The summary of Wizardry from their website is as follows:

The wizarding world is in peril, and only you can help! Dark forces are on their way to your wizarding school, and it’s up to you to stop them. To defeat them, you’ll need your trusty broom, and it’s unfortunately been locked in the school’s highest tower. In order to find your broom, you’ll have to sneak into the school unnoticed, escape the potion master’s dungeon and overcome all the tricks of the headmaster’s study. But hurry up – dawn is only an hour away, and the forces of darkness will be here by daybreak!

Wizardry was my 290th room. Here is what I thought: 

• the theming in Wizardry was really nicely done. The quality of the set design and props is very high – this is on par with more modern rooms that have all really stepped up with the quality of their theming;
• we enjoyed the puzzles in Wizardry. Some were a little tricky but the majority were all solved by our girls (who were aged 7 and 11 at the time). Consistent with more modern generation rooms, there were no locks to be seen anywhere in Wizardry;
• Wizardry is clearly aimed at Harry Potter fans and children and I think it does a really good job in that space. My girls (the eldest of which is a HP nut) really enjoyed the magic of this room;
• overall I would describe Wizardry’s puzzles as being on the easier side, but this was still challenging for our girls.

I can see this room being a hit with kids – it looks beautiful and plays really well, with significant ‘magical’ moments thrown in. One thing to note about this room though is that it is an Indestroom room. For those who are not aware, Indestroom is a company that designs and builds ready-to-play escape rooms, which are then purchased by ER businesses around the world. I wasn’t aware of that fact when I played Wizardry, but since then I went and played a room on the Gold Coast called “The School of Magic”. To my surprise, both rooms were largely identical (subject to a few puzzles that were different and a different ending). So that's something to be aware of if you have played other wizard-themed rooms around the country (or possibly overseas).


Where:                    13 Cambridge Street, The Rocks

Duration:                60 minutes

Themes:                  6 themes

Price:                       $55pp (for a team of 4)

Overall Rating:       A wizard room with high production value – great for kids

More details:           https://paniqroom.com.au/ 

 

The Cool Space - Séance Review

Hi everyone

In February 2024, I headed to check out the (then) newest escape room outfit in Sydney. Located in Chippendale, the business is called The Cool Space. This time I played with 2 of my enthusiast friends, so we were a team of 3.

The Cool Space is run by friends Josh and Daniel, who themselves are enthusiasts and who each worked previously at 2 of the best escape room businesses in the country. I think it’s always nice to know that the ER owners/designers have played a lot of rooms as enthusiasts, as it usually shows in their attention to detail in their own design (especially if, like most of us, they have been burned by shitty puzzles themselves when playing others’ rooms).

Their first room is called Séance. Here is the room summary:

Contact a spirit and puzzle your way through their story in a unique, seated escape room experience! Calling all ghost hunters! The new owner of the Abercrombie mansion needs your help… Gather your crew, it’s time to perform a seance! After discovering a strange box inside the mansion, the new owner has tasked your team of ghost hunters to make contact with a haunting spirit said to hold the key that unlocks the box. The task is fairly simple, gain the spirit’s trust and get the key.

What could possibly go wrong?

Séance was my 289th room. Here is what I thought: 

• my favourite aspect of Séance was the innovative use of what is a pretty small space. Players are seated throughout the entire experience at a table while a séance takes place; at no point do players walk around the space of even stand up. This is truly unique (I have not heard of anything like that anywhere else) and no doubt this made designing the puzzles and room flow really challenging, but it really paid off;
• from a business perspective, the smaller space would no doubt have been cheaper and quicker to build compared to other much larger rooms. But I think it was a really clever move by The Cool Space, as it allowed them to open quickly and start making money while they then build their second, larger space. I 100% prefer this over the more common practice now of newer ER businesses purchasing room designs and whole fitouts from third party companies like Indestroom – I have yet to play an Indestroom room that I really enjoyed;
• the puzzles and theming in Séance were all strong. When I played back in February 2024, some of the puzzle elements were quite simple. I returned in July 2024 to watch my wife and her family play Séance and Josh and Daniel showed me the various puzzles they had changed and certain puzzle elements that had been swapped out for sturdier materials;
• there was also fun actor engagement in Séance. In fact, I brought along a ‘family heirloom’ with me in an attempt to try to make the actor break character. I had mixed results and will have to try again when I play their next room 😊;
• from a puzzle and room flow design perspective, I thought there were a lot of clever elements in Séance. All facets of the space were utilised (and they were utilised really well); and
• this room is a scary room, so it’s not suitable for kids (their website suggests 16+). I have played many of the scariest rooms in the world and I think the scariness level in this room is very low (so if you don’t like scary rooms, don’t be put off). If you have a real aversion to scares, reach out to them ahead of time and I am sure they will accommodate your request.

I was really impressed by Séance, especially given that it’s Josh and Daniel’s first room. The puzzles were all challenging and rewarding to solve and the use of the space is truly unique and innovative. We really enjoyed this room and look forward to what they have to offer next. Also, everyone who plays Séance walks away with one of the coolest ER pins I have seen to date. The Cool Space’s logo is an ice cube – the pin for Séance is an ice cube seated on a chair (much like players in Séance). I suspect their next room will have a similarly cleverly-posed ice cube (pins are awesome and greatly appreciated).

Where:                    2/134 Abercrombie St, Chippendale

Duration:                60 minutes

Themes:                  1 theme so far (another on the way soon)

Price:                       $55pp (for a team of 4)

Overall Rating:       A truly innovative room, executed really well

More details:           https://www.thecoolspace.com.au/

Labyrinth Escape Rooms - Zen and Outbreak Reviews

 

Hi everyone

In February 2024, I headed back out to Parramatta to play a new room at Labyrinth. We have always had fun at Joan and Frank’s rooms there each of the times we had been before. This time I played not with my usual group, but with other enthusiast friends. We had originally planned on playing just their Zen room, but we escaped pretty quickly and managed to sneak in their Outbreak room too.

There is what I thought of both rooms:

Zen – Room 287

As for theming, this room had a pretty cool impact the second we walked in. The room had a futuristic feel, almost completely devoid of colour. It felt to me like it was a futuristic zen space with possibly hints of an asylum thrown in. There were some cool puzzles in the room that contained a mix of dexterity as well as some really cool, well-concealed high-tech components. This was a fun room – we all laughed at various points. Overall the puzzles were on the easier side – it would definitely suit newer teams and certainly families.

Outbreak – Room 288

I really enjoyed Outbreak. From the perspective purely of theming, I think this is Labyrinth’s strongest room – the props were great, the treatment of every surface was really well done, the mix of high-tech elements throughout was also great. Outbreak felt like a movie-set. I also really enjoyed the puzzles in Outbreak – again, they all made sense in the space, there was a nice mix of hunt and seek fun and some really cool tech in some of the puzzles. I thought this was a cracker room and really enjoyed it. We also broke the record (although I am not sure if that record still stands in the almost 12 months it has taken me to write up this review). Highly recommend this room!

Where:                    1B Victoria Rd, Parramatta

Duration:                60 minutes

Themes:                   6 themes

Price:                       $60pp (for a team of 4)

Overall Rating:       Awesome theming – Outbreak is my new fave Labyrinth room

More details:           https://labyrinthescaperooms.com.au/