Hi everyone!
Just before Christmas 2020, my team managed to finally get back to Next Level to check out their latest rooms. We have enjoyed all of our experiences at Next Level, right back to when they opened and they had a 15 minute blitz room, to pop-up experiences they have designed for conventions through to their online and physical rooms.
A little over 2 months ago now, my team and I tried out Next Level Escape’s The Show Must Go On room (TSMGO). In fact, we tried 2 of their rooms back to back – both TSMGO and The Game rooms.
This time we were our usual team of 4 adults. TSMGO was our 161st room to date (and our 94th room in Sydney).
Here is the summary of TSMGO from Next Level Escape’s website:
The Inner City Amateur Dramatic Society welcomes you to their production of Scenes From Romeo and Juliet. You’ll be a huge part of the play! As stagehands! Underneath the stage! Isn’t that great?
Most of the cast and crew haven’t abandoned the play (hah!), everyone totally remembers their lines, the lead actors definitely don’t hate each other, and the rigging is in perfect condition. Really. It’ll be the most relaxing experience you’ve ever had.
An audio play, interactive performance and escape room, The Show Must Go On is a unique experience that will have you laughing as you help this bunch of amateurs put on a production no one will ever forget!
As always, I’ll start off with what I liked about the room:
- this room was fun! We played the roles of stage hands scrambling to fix issues as they arose with our play, all from beneath the stage. This room is an excellent example of how to theme a room – all surfaces of the experience were well themed and the puzzles and puzzle elements all made sense in the space;
- there was a really nice mix of different puzzles in the space, including a little hunt and seek fun (which my team is consistently poor at…);
- whilst this room is heavy on the narrative, there is also a lot of tech in the room (which, again, really fits in with the room theme (ie we aren’t talking lasers for the sake of lasers here);
- there are also some really nicely-designed low-tech puzzles in the space, which were really fun to solve;
- as always, Next Level threads humour throughout their rooms and TSMGO was no exception; and
- adding to the immersion was our at-times-overly-(yet-perfectly)-dramatic game master, ably performed by Aaron, one of the owners of Next Level. This really added to the fun (and the theme completely lends itself to a game master coming in and out of the space throughout the experience).
I have nothing at all to report in relation to any negative or constructive areas of TSMGO. We had a heap of fun. This room was family friendly and would suit new players and more experienced players alike.
This was the first physical room that my team and I had played together
in about a year, so we were a little rusty but it didn’t take long to get back
into the swing. As always, we spent some time after the experience chatting
with owners Aaron and Leanne about the room and they took us through how the
room came together, each of the puzzles, etc. We were also handed a Broadway "playbill" style program of the play, which was an incredibly nice touch (and well done Aaron for chasing us down and finding us to hand us the playbill :-)
My team had a ball playing TSMGO. It was great to come back to Next Level after such a long break. It was also really nice going back to the CBD and feeling like life has returned to normal (at least to some extent).
Where: Lower Ground, 23 O'Connell Street, Sydney
Duration: 50-70 minutes
Themes:
4 (plus
an online game)
Cost:
$52pp per team of 4 (we played at the kind invitation of
the owners)
Overall Rating: Incredibly fun, narrative-based room
More details: https://www.nextlevelescape.com.au/
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