CT Adventure Escape Room MU-T Review

Hi everyone.  My usual fellow escape room buddies and I (4 adults in total) tried this room in April 2016.  This was our 27^th room in Sydney (and our 37^th room in Australia) so far…

I learned about CT Adventure Escape Room from 3 readers of my blog.  We purchased a Groupon code and tried our luck.  Lately, when trying a new escape room outfit, I go in with pretty low expectations.  This is because the majority of new escape rooms that have opened in Sydney have been pretty average.  This is however not always true – there are some newer outfits that have awesome rooms, and there are certainly some older outfits that are very poor.  For example, some of the outfits that are below average in Sydney (in my honest opinion) include Exitus, Break the Code, One Way Out, EscapeClub, Mystery Puzzle and Escape Hunt Sydney – with the exception of one or two decent rooms between them.  Overall, I do not rate any of these outfits as true escape rooms.

So my team had low expectations when we went and tried CT Adventure Escape Game.  I’m really pleased to confirm that we had a really fun time in their room, called MU-T.  The theme of this room is that you are on a mission to attempt to break into a Museum to locate and steal an artefact. 

As usual, I will start with what I liked about CT Adventure Escape Room’s MU-T:

1.    The theming was really strong.  The majority of the props matched the theme really well.

2.    The puzzles were fantastic.  This is one of the more high-tech rooms in Sydney.  This room gives Mission Sydney’s Dr M or Vampire Castle a run for its money on the high tech front.  I personally enjoy high tech rooms, but that being said, some of my favourite rooms have little or no high tech at all.  The theme though of breaking into a Museum does lend itself to some high tech elements, so it worked really well in this room.

3.    Some of the puzzles are up there with the best I have seen to date.  Whilst they do have high tech puzzles, they also had a number of hand-made puzzles that were really well designed (they reminded me of some of the Hungarian-style home-made puzzles that I have seen in rooms at Paniq Room or ParaPark Sydney).  One puzzle in particular had us all laughing and was a real highlight of our experience.  One other puzzle had us scratching our heads for a while but when we received a hint, we realised it was completely our fault that we hadn’t solved the puzzle earlier.

4.    The room(s) design is very clever.  One room in particular has so many things going on that it is initially a little overwhelming, but it’s very simple room design (which again is in keeping with the theme) adeptly hides all of the high tech elements.  This room is not just high tech for the sake of high tech – it’s been well considered a designed.

5.    There is a very good mix of hunt and seek fun and puzzle solving.  The room is also linear in some aspects, but there are also opportunities for players to branch off and work on their own puzzles separately. 

6.    Whilst being a lot of fun, this room was still pretty challenging.  There are a lot of puzzle elements to be solved.  We had a couple of hints and still only managed to escape with 2 minutes and 36 seconds left on the clock.  This got the adrenalin pumping towards the end!

7.    The room owners seem to be really keen to listen to our feedback and are looking to make some changes to their rooms based on the feedback that they receive.  I really like this because it shows that they care about their business and about the experience that their customers have.

As for the parts that we didn’t like so much with the room, there isn’t much to report here:

1.    There is one puzzle in particular that was a little clunky (we knew the solution and tried it about a dozen times before it worked).  I think the tech just needs to be tweaked a little so that it is more responsive - all of the other high tech puzzles worked perfectly.

2.    There is a visual puzzle that works well, but it requires knowledge of the real world in order to solve it.  I think a good escape room puzzle should not require any external knowledge and instead all of the elements required to solve the puzzle should be in the room.  I think this could be remedied by introducing other props in the room that provide that information.

3.    Although the theming is very strong, in one section some of the props did not really make sense in the space.  It was still a really fun puzzle though, but I think a few changes in the props would really add to the overall experience.

4.    The communication system was pretty good but I think it can be improved.  This is the first escape room I have been to where we were handed a mobile phone and were told to send a text message to a pre-programmed mobile number to get hints.  Our mobile had a pretty low battery charge by the end of the 1 hour game, so I think another system (or a different phone with a larger battery) should be used.  It is also difficult at times to properly communicate via text messages, so at one point the game master entered our room so we could explain our issue.  I always prefer when game masters do not enter rooms, as this really takes away from the immersive experience.

5.    The last negative aspect of CT Adventure Escape Room to note is the room price.  Although we used a Groupon and played this room at a very reasonable price of $79 for 4 adults (click here for the Groupon link), their standard pricing is pretty expensive ($190 for 4 adults).  In this regard, I note that the average rack rate at Sydney escape rooms is around $120-$140 for 4 adults. 

Simply put, this was a great room.   As always, the major determining factor in how I judge rooms is the fun factor - we had a heap of fun in this room!

Where:                        Level 7, 61 Market Street, Sydney NSW 2000 (look for a glass door

 between Rip Curl and DJs on the south side of Market Street)

Duration:                    60 minutes

Themes:                      2 themes

Cost:                           $190 for 4 adults (but we used a Groupon which was $79, but only

                                    valid Monday to Friday)

Overall Summary:     High tech and a heap of fun!

More details:              http://ctadventureescapegame.com.au/