Hi all
I was contacted by Alex, a film
writer and director in October who invited my team to come along and try out a
new escape room adventure that he had written.
His room, called The Art of
Murder, is located in a quiet street in Marrickville in Sydney’s inner
west. Unlike most escape rooms where the objective is to escape a room (or rescue a person/item, break into a room, defuse a bomb, etc), The Art
of Murder requires players to solve various puzzles to help gather evidence in
a murder investigation. Here is the summary
of the experience from their website:
THE ART
OF MURDER
An immersive escape room / alternate reality theatre game.
A wealthy old lady has been murdered, her young lover stands accused.
Your small group of investigators enter her magnificent home to build a
case.
Lift fingerprints, find clues, pick locks, solve puzzles and locate the
bloody murder weapon.
Be warned though, the suspect has a plane ticket to the Carribean in an
hour.
You’re on the clock to gather enough evidence before he slips your grasp
forever!
The Art of Murder was my 102nd
room in Australia and my 72nd room in Sydney.
Here are my thoughts on The Art
of Murder:
·
when we arrived, we were greeted by the owner Alex and the
experience started immediately. We were
new police recruits that had been called on to investigate and solve a
murder. The Art of Murder is one of very
few escape rooms in Sydney where the game master is in the escape room with
you. This is relatively uncommon in
Australia, with only a handful of rooms in Melbourne and Sydney using live
actors as game masters. There are some
real benefits and some potential pitfalls to this, but more on that later;
·
the building is awesome and the room in which the experience takes
place is uber cool. It is a former art
gallery and there is a really eclectic collection of art on every surface –
this is the first escape room that I am aware of in Australian that is
effectively inside an art gallery;
·
The Art of Murder is one of those rooms where a lot of
consideration has been given to the back story (perhaps unsurprisingly given
that Alex is a writer). This really adds
to the immersion level of the room (as does the room setting and the artwork);
·
there is a nice mix of hunt and seek fun as well as a mix of
interesting puzzles to solve. Over all,
we finished the experience in about half the allotted time, so I would describe
it as being a room best suited to beginners/intermediate players (although my
experienced team certainly had a lot of fun).
Although the room is about a murder, it is not overly dark and I think
it would be suited to younger players (with supervision);
·
there are some interesting elements to various puzzles. Alex has clearly tried to
incorporate some more authentic police investigation techniques into the puzzle
and room design, again really adding a layer of depth to the immersion level. Also, some of the puzzles were unique and of
a type we had not seen in over 100 rooms before, which is always really nice;
·
as outlined above, the clue delivery system in The Art of Murder
is by way of the game master being in the room alongside players. Alex plays the role of a helpful police
assistant, providing guidance to our team of new recruits. If you have read my reviews of other rooms
where game masters are inside the experience with players, you will see that
whilst these can be some of the most enjoyable and immersive experiences, they
do lend themselves to a simple problem – the removal of the barrier between
players and the game master can sometimes result in it becoming too easy for
the game master to provide guidance and hints.
In a more typical setting, it is not quite so easy for hints to be
provided – game masters are physically removed from the space and normally a
system of providing hints is put in place (where typically, players have to ask
for hints). This is not the case in an
experience where the game master is standing beside you. Respectfully, we found that at times, Alex was a little too quick to
provide guidance (which in some instances, took away from our feeling of
accomplishment in solving a couple of the puzzles). This
was partly our fault as I should have made it clear beforehand that given we
are an experienced team, we prefer to try pretty hard to solve puzzles before
asking for help. I can appreciate that
it is hard as a game master to know the solutions and to have to bite your
tongue while watching players, but it makes such a big difference to the
overall experience. I think this is something that can easily be improved, perhaps by asking players ahead of time how much guidance they would like. I have provided this feedback to Alex.
Overall, my team enjoyed REALLY our
experience at The Art of Murder. I would describe this room as a very
immersive and cleverly written experience that is suited to players of all levels and is family friendly.
As always, the main test of a
room is whether my team had fun and we certainly did have fun. Subject to some tweaks to the hint delivery
(which is something that could be very easily improved), this is a great, truly
immersive room in a fantastic space.
Some players love high tech locks
and automation (above all else) in escape room experiences. Others,
like my team, would prefer a low tech room with high immersion and a strong
backstory. This is definitely our kind
of experience.
Where:
111
Chapel Street, Marrickville
Duration: 60
minutes
Themes: 1
theme
Cost: $40pp
(although we played at the invitation of the owner)
Overall Summary:
A fun murder mystery in an awesome
space
