Hey all
My group of friends (4 adults)
checked out Labyrinth Escape Rooms’ Japanese Horror room in April 2018.
We hadn’t been to Labyrinth since September 2015, soon after they opened,
when we tried their Insane Asylum room (you can read my review of that room
here).
The summary of Japanese Horror is
below (taken from their website):
Many
moons ago, it is rumoured that four Japanese Kogal girls were kidnapped and murdered in the
home of a depraved and sinister ghost. Decades later and the girl’s bodies
remain, overcome by the evil spirit who captured them and tormenting all who
enter.
As
darkness takes over, it’s up to your team to brave the house of horrors.
Outsmart the wicked and release the girl’s bodies from evil before you too are
trapped inside. The Kogal
are waiting, will you deliver them to peaceful slumber?
Labyrinth has now been open for
more than two and a half years. They
previously had a Mad Scientist room, which we didn’t manage to check out before
they replaced the room. They currently
have three rooms open – Insane Asylum, Japanese Horror and Mexican Cartel.
Japanese Horror was our 92nd
room in Australia and our 62nd room in Sydney.
First off, I'll say what I
enjoyed most about Japanese Horror at Labyrinth Escape Rooms:
a)
we had a lot of fun in Japanese Horror;
b)
the room design is well-considered. They have managed to fit a lot of puzzles
into a relatively small space;
c)
the theming is strong – the props all look good in the space and
lighting/audio all help to set the scene.
I would describe Japanese Horror as spooky or eerie, rather than incredibly
scary. For those who are worried about
rooms being too scary for them, I can report that there are no jump scares in
this room. By contrast, I have been to some
truly scary rooms (one in particular in Melbourne comes to mind) – I can report
that Japanese Horror will not make you need a change of underwear. However, it is definitely not suited to young
kids;
d)
I think Labyrinth are very clever at including a great mix of high
tech and low tech puzzles. Some are
fiendishly simple – the type that make you want to give yourself a forehead
slap when you figure out the solution. Others
require more than one step. Some of the puzzles in Japanese Horror (and in all
of the Labyrinth rooms) have elements that remind me of more traditional
Hungarian escape room style puzzles – these are typically lower tech puzzles
that are quite manual and visual. They
were a lot of fun and there were a couple of elements that we had not seen used
in escape rooms before, which was cool; and
e)
Labyrinth use the voice of God system for communications between
players and the game master. We didn’t ask
for any hints during our game play, but the voice of God system is the best
form of communications in escape rooms in my view (except perhaps for those few
rooms where the game master is an actor inside the room with you, but these are
currently very rare).
As for some of the improvements
that could be made to Japanese Horror, there isn’t much to report here. There was some automated audio that we couldn’t
quite understand at one point (it was a little muffled) but it didn’t affect
our game in any way (we guessed what was being said and we were right).
We managed to escape in around 37
mins 20 secs, which meant that we broke the then current record by about 11
minutes. I understand from Labyrinth
that this is their hardest room with a very low escape rate and I can see that
it is a harder room than most escape rooms in Australia. I especially enjoyed reading all of the
comments on a Facebook from Labyrinth about our beating the record – so many
players who hadn’t been able to escape didn’t believe our time (or said that it
must have been our second attempt). Even
though the time was good, I didn’t feel like we rushed our way through. We
enjoyed the puzzles and plodded along. I
expect that the record will be broken again in the future – I can absolutely
see a team rushing through and escaping in around 30 minutes.
Japanese Horror is a great
room. I am often asked for room
recommendations and Japanese Horror ticks many of the boxes that most people
are looking for – dark/eerie theme, great puzzles, good storyline and
challenging puzzles. Go and check it out
and see if you can beat our record!
Where:
Suite
3/85-93 Victoria Road, Parramatta
Duration:
60 minutes
Themes: 3 themes
Cost: $38pp (or $152 for a team of 4)
Overall Rating:
An eerie room with great puzzles
More details:
http://labyrinthescaperooms.com.au/
No comments:
Post a Comment