Review of The Mystery Puzzle - The Casino Revenge Thriller theme

My group of friends (4 adults) checked out The Mystery Puzzle's 'The Casino Revenge Thriller' room in February 2015. This was our ninth escape room in Sydney over all.

The building is easy to find and this time, because we were there during business hours, the building was open and we were able to go straight up to level 1 without having to be let in. We were then given a briefing before starting the escape.

They currently have two rooms, The Pirate Adventure and The Casino Revenge Thriller.  I understand that they have 2 identical Pirate Adventure rooms (which cater for larger corporate groups), although I'm not sure if they have more than one Casino Revenge Thriller room.

We had already been there a few weeks ago and escaped their Pirate Adventure room.

First off, I'll say what I enjoyed most about The Casino Revenge Thriller at The Mystery Puzzle:

• the room was about average in terms of quality and level of difficulty; and
• the price was good (we got a Groupon voucher for $15 per person)

As for some of the negatives with The Casino Revenge Thriller at The Mystery Puzzle, my honest feedback is that:

• the room is simply too easy over all.  We escaped in 26 minutes and 39 seconds and that included getting stuck for a few minutes on one puzzle.  If we had not been stuck on this puzzle (which was entirely our own fault), we probably would have escaped in around 20 minutes.  This is far too fast for an escape room - it confirms that there is not enough to do in the room;
• my team agreed that any one of us could have escaped this room single-handedly within about 30 minutes.  I am not saying this to brag (far from it), I'm just commenting on how there weren't any puzzles that required a team to solve;
• the theming was pretty poor and of not of good quality.  The props did not match the room and again, there were 80+ books thrown just for the sake of it - they had no purpose being in the room, which is supposed to be a casino room theme?  There were also other props that served little purpose and I didn't feel that the rooms had a clear link between them (or an explanation of what each room was).
• I think a lot more thought needed to go into the design of both this room (and in hindsight, the Pirate Adventure room);
• without spoiling the room for others, the puzzles in this room are very similar to their Pirate Adventure room, which is a real shame and in my honest opinion, a bit of lazy design.  When you have two rooms, you have to assume that customers will do both rooms.  The two rooms should therefore be very different - there was no creativity here between the two rooms, which was a true disappointment.  Given that we had already done the other room, we all found this room to be predictable and therefore a little boring;
• some of the puzzles are a little clunky and don't work perfectly (we figured them out in only a few minutes but they were ambiguous and didn't fit perfectly);
• there weren't enough puzzles and there was way too much 'hunt and seek' (compared to the number of puzzles).  They really need to work on coming up with more creative puzzles and there should be at least twice as many puzzles in the room to make it more of a challenge;
• there wasn't a clear way to communicate with those running The Pirate Adventure while we were in the room.  In fact, once we got out of the room, we opened the door to find a completely empty reception room.  It wasn't until around 5 to 10 minutes later that the owners returned to the reception room (they had been busy setting up another room).  I found this a bit annoying because if we had been in the room and were waving at the camera for clues, there would have been nobody there to help us.  As I have said in other reviews, there needs to be a dedicated person on the outside of the room watching your every move and available to help when called on.  

Over all, the price was good and it's a fair room.  Personally, I would only recommend this outfit to those who have never tried escape rooms before or those with kids (as both rooms are very kid-friendly).  However, that being said, there are other rooms in Sydney I would recommend to those groups ahead of either room at The Mystery Puzzle.  

To be fair, I'm being a little harder on this place than it probably deserves.  But the fact that both of their rooms are so similar and have the same types of puzzles and mechanisms has annoyed and disappointed me, and it really affected our time in this Casino Revenge Thriller room, which is reflected in my score of this room.  My score is also affected by the other brilliant rooms that I have done elsewhere in Sydney lately, which are far superior to this one.

Where:                    Level 1, 37 Bligh Street, Sydney

Duration:                60 minutes

Themes:                 2 themes 

Cost:                       $36 each (4 players) (But watch out for coupons - we paid just $15pp)

Overall Rating:      2.5 out of 5 stars

More details:          http://www.themysterypuzzle.com/