De Gouden Kooi - Secret of St Rumoldus and Han's Revenge Reviews (Belgium)

Hi everyone

The fifteenth and sixteenth rooms that we played on our May/June 2024 child-free trip to Holland were The Secret of Saint Rumoldus and Han’s Revenge at De Gouden Kooi in Belgium. Their rooms are located in Mechelen, which from memory was about a 45 minute train and bus trip from Brussels city centre.

I played these rooms as a duo with a fellow enthusiast. I had heard great things in particular about Han’s Revenge, which was TERPECA #5 at the time that we played it. Here is what we thought about each room:

Secret of Saint Rumoldus – Room 305

• The theming in St Rumoldus was well done. We could tell though that this was an older room, based on some of the tech and set design;
• initially I was concerned that St Rumoldus might be a pretty scary room, but I can report that it is more spooky than scary. There are no character interactions at all – there are loud and dark moments which really add to the spooky atmosphere, but nothing super scary;
• we room flow was nicely done, which involved a reasonable amount of crawling by the end of the experience. The puzzles all made sense and were satisfying to solve; and
• overall, I thought St Rumoldus was a strong room. I understand that it previously sat at #22 on the TERPECA list, but I think its current position at #176 is probably about right based on its current competition.

Han’s Revenge – Room 306

• Han’s Revenge was the main draw card for us (and the reason we took a train and a bus from Brussels all the way out to Mechelen). To start with, I can, to some extent, understand why Han’s Revenge has an enthusiast following, which has resulted in a high TERPECA rating. It has a really nice room flow, a really large scale set and some really nice set design;
• the puzzles throughout Han’s Revenge were all quite varied. I really liked the room flow, which started slower and eased you into the more dramatic end game shenanigans. The puzzles were all satisfying (and fun) to solve;
• playing as a duo, we both managed to see pretty much all of the puzzles and we escaped with a reasonable amount of time to spare. There are no character interactions in Han’s Revenge and it was not a dark or scary room (although there were some quite loud moments which younger kids might not enjoy so much).

Overall, Han’s Revenge was clearly the better room of the 2 rooms that we played at De Gouden Kooi. St Rumoldus was strong, but no longer in the same league as the best rooms in Europe. And whilst I enjoyed Han’s Revenge, I also do not think it deserves the spot of #5 (as it did when it debuted), nor do I think it even deserves its current #11 spot. I have now played many of the rooms that sit beneath Han’s Revenge on the top 100 TERPECA rooms list and my honest opinion is that I think it probably deserves a ranking more like #50 or so. Don’t get me wrong – it is still a great game with some nice set design and effects, but I was surprised to see it quite so high on the TERPECA ranking given all of the other amazing rooms in Europe.

Where:                 Haverwerf 7, 2800 Mechelen

Duration:            70 minutes

Themes:              7 themes

TERPECA:          Han’s Revenge #11 (formerly #5)

                            Secret of St Rumoldus #176 (formerly #22)

Price:                    160€

Overall Rating:     Han’s Revenge is a great (but not top 11) room

More details:         https://www.degoudenkooi.be/en/