Hi everyone
My wife and I went to Penrith in
January 2020 to check out The Escape Bus.
The Escape Bus is affiliated with Unreal Mini Golf in Penrith, which is
putt putt on steroids. We had a quick
look through the mini golf and the theming was the best I had seen anywhere for
putt putt.
The owners of Unreal Mini Golf
have a bus permanently parked in the carpark right outside of Unreal Mini
Golf. The bus is split into 2 halves,
each with a differently-themed escape room.
We did both rooms back to back.
The space is quite small and has been designed for 2 players (although
could probably be played by solo players as well).
The first room at The Escape Bus
that we tried was Fallout Bunker. The
room summary from their website for Fallout Bunker is here:
The government
had decommissioned a series of experimental nuclear power sites where research
for alternative power generation had been undertaken. Due to a national
security risk all power sites have been recommissioned. You have been recruited
to operate Bunker 2750 and restore the security network provided by the Unreal
Atomic Energy Agency (UAEA).
We then went back to back and
played Alcatraz. The room summary from
their website for Alcatraz is here:
You and your
gang have been arrested and sentenced for 10 years for robbing a gas station
for $16.23. Your holding cell on the Rock once held Al Capone who hid a plan to
escape, which included his ledger... If you and your gang can escape you will
be set for life!
Fallout Bunker
and Alcatraz were our 137th and 138th rooms to date and
our 89th and 90th rooms respectively in (or around)
Sydney.
Here is what we thought of
Fallout Bunker and Alcatraz:
·
the theming in both rooms is really nicely done. The attention to detail
is off the charts. The designer/game
master spent some time with us after each room discussing how the room had been
designed so as to be as historically accurate as possible (and it shows);
·
we had some technical issues with Fallout Bunker (there is quite a
lot of tech in the room and unfortunately, some of it failed). The game master decided to reset the room after
about the first 10 minutes so we effectively started again, which was the right
call to make. Part of our frustration
with this was that we had called for a clue (or help) but the game master was
dealing with players in the other room, so he didn’t hear us. We also had some audio issues throughout the entire
Fallout Bunker experience;
·
the back story and props in both rooms were great. The puzzles made sense in the space and the
objective of each room completely fit with the theme;
·
there were some issues that I had with some of the puzzles in both
rooms. There was one puzzle in
particular in Fallout Bunker that was an absolute chore. I won’t give any spoilers, but it required
players to listen to a long audio track on a loop while solving a puzzle by
what felt like pure trial and error. This
was a really inelegant puzzle and we didn’t enjoy solving it; and
·
similarly, there were puzzle elements in Alcatraz that we didn’t
love. One that I recall is a puzzle that
required a lot of deciphering which was ultimately for nothing. It wasn’t quite a red herring as much as it
was a time waster and as a result, this felt really unsatisfying to solve.
Of both rooms, I think Alcatraz
was the better room – it felt like it had a better game flow and better quality
of puzzles than Fallout Bunker. I think
the owners are incredibly good at theming a room – their props and room
finishes are the quality you would expect to see on a movie set (as is their
mini golf for what it’s worth). However, I really feel like their rooms are let
down by the puzzle design. The technical
issues that we had didn’t help at all (as it really coloured the experience we
had), but first and foremost I think the main issues were due to puzzle design. I think these rooms are both examples of
rooms that would benefit from a puzzle designer helping with room flow (and to
remove or improve some of the puzzles that do not work well).
I also think that at $45 per
head, they need to have a dedicated game master for each room. It is not good enough to share a game master
across both rooms. This issue is
something I have gone on and on about here on my blog, but it’s something that
many escape room businesses do badly.
There are few things more frustrating
in an escape room than calling for a clue (sometimes over and over again) and
getting no response. Unfortunately that
happened to us while in Fallout Bunker more than once…
Where: Unit 10,
69 York Road, South Penrith
Duration: 60
minutes
Themes: 2 themes
Price: $45 each (2 players)
Overall
Rating: Brilliant
theming but let down by several puzzles and tech issues
More details: https://www.escapebus.com.au/
