Hi everyone
It has been such a LONG(!) time
between drinks. I played my last escape room back in July and I have been
jonesing ever since. I have pretty much tried all of the escape rooms in
Sydney, so there aren't too many left to do.
I was on a family holiday a
couple of weeks ago up near Port Macquarie when I learned that Next Level
Escape had designed 2 different 15 minute escape rooms for Oz Comic Con, based on the
new Marvel Justice League movie. I loved their Blitz and Ex Libris rooms
(see my reviews of those rooms here and here), so I REALLY wanted to somehow
get to the Con to check out their new rooms. The problem was that I was
due back in Sydney on the last day of the Con…
So I managed to convince my wife
that we should drive back in the morning and then head straight to the
Con. I had bought my girls Supergirl outfits beforehand for Halloween, so
they were in! So after an almost 5 hour drive, we arrived at the
Con. Leanne, one of the owners of Next Level Escape, had kindly booked us
a time slot for late in the day.
Out of interest, before we took on
the room, we got to chatting with Leanne about how Next Level came to design
the Justice League rooms. Leanne mentioned that they were contacted by
the company that was putting together the Con and asked whether they could put
together some rooms. It was a pretty enormous task to design 2 rooms in a
very tight timeline (something like only a month or two). But
unexpectedly, the guys at Next Level were up to the task.
We started with their Aquaman
Room. We weren’t our usual team of 4 adults for these escapes, but we
were instead my wife and I and our 5yo and almost 1yo daughters.
This was our 46th escape
room in Sydney and our 59th escape room in Australia.
A summary from Next Level of
their Aquaman Room is below:
Aquaman
was last seen in this Atlanteanstructure.
Aquaman, also known as Arthur Curry, has used an Atlantean artefact to
conceal a message to Queen Mera.
Activiate it to reveal his location and unlock the trident blocking your
escape.
Queen Mera
will be back in twelve minutes. She
looked pissed after reading his message, so get out before she returns!
Here’s what I really liked about
the room:
·
firstly, this was the very first room we have tried when we were
combined with other people. This was a function of the rooms being fully
booked out during the Con, so to get more people through Next Level combined
different groups;
·
it was really cool to do a room with people we didn’t know.
It’s very different though to our normal experiences, where the 4 of us have
known each other for ~25 years (so we can yell at each other and be quite
“honest” with each other);
·
the other couple in our group were lovely and we kind of split up
and each worked on different puzzles – this worked well as we escaped in a time
that we were told was about 20 seconds off the record for the Con;
·
the puzzles were all awesome.
They were of the very high quality that I expected from Next Level,
based on their other rooms we had tried in the past;
·
the theme was really cool too. I understand from Leanne at Next Level that
aspects of this room will be used in their new Artefact room, which is due to
open this month. My team are actually
going to beta test the new room next week, so watch this space for my review
shortly;
·
I think the room was really cleverly designed to introduce new
people to the world of escape rooms. The
puzzles were challenging but not incredibly difficult – I am sure that many
people who have been wondering what this escape room thing is about would have
tried this room at the Con and would be booking in a full 1 hour experience in
no time.
I have nothing to report on the
negative side at all. Next Level are a
great outfit who really care about providing immersive and well-designed
experiences. It is truly impressive that
they managed to put together such immersive experiences in such a short period
of time for the Con.
I truly hope that the amount of
word of mouth generated from their hard work really pays off for them (and that
hard work will no doubt spill over into great benefits for the whole escape
room industry).
Where:
Oz Comic
Con (Darling Harbour)
Duration: 15 minutes
Themes: 2
Cost: Included in purchase price of Oz Comic Con entry tickets
Overall Rating: A second brilliant 15 minute room from Next Level!
More details:
https://www.nextlevelescape.com.au/
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