Ukiyo at Home - The Birdcage (Virtual)

 

Hi all

Back in September 2020, I heard from other enthusiasts that Ukiyo, a Melbourne-based escape room business, was running another play at home experience, entitled Bird Cage, that would be played out online over a period of 4 days.  

The story, which was inspired by Stranger Things, was set in the Aussie outback and saw players trying to contain a specimen that had escaped from a remote laboratory.  

Firstly, I really loved the start of the game.  It involved the use of a university/lab online bulletin board system, where players took on the roles of students.  The level of immersion and interaction with NPCs was excellent (and often at times hilarious).  It was nostalgic and so much fun.

Some of the earlier puzzles were quite interesting - some were challenging and they were quite varied.  At that point, I was enjoying Bird Cage far more than I had enjoyed Ukiyo's earlier play at home game, Stawk Pine Falls.

However, the wheels completely fell off for me when a particular puzzle required players to download software.  The software just did not work for me (and I understand, many others).  I tried downloading it and playing it on 2 different computers, but no dice.  It was incredibly disappointing and the only way to progress beyond that point would have been to rely on other players telling me the solution, which is something I wasn't really interested in doing.  So I simply stopped and never finished.

Like Stawk Pine Falls, I think Bird Cage needed more playtesting before going live.  I think a major improvement in Bird Cage of Stawk Pine Falls was that the former did not contain so much unnecessary information/red herrings that players had to wade through.  However, not being able to complete the game because the software did not work was really pretty crappy.  I appreciate the amount of wor that would have gone into this experience (especially during a pandemic lockdown), but I found it really frustrating that due to a lack of playtesting, the game was broken.

As with Stawk Pine Falls, the cost of Bird Cage was only $5 per player, which was objectively great value for the content.  I just wish more work had been put into playtesting the experience before it went live.  

Ukiyo at Home have since run a sequel to their Stawk Pine Falls play at home experience.  However, based on my experiences with the first instalment and then with Bird Cage, I decided to give the sequel a miss.

Thanks

Scott