Tales of Torchdale - Hunting Season and The Toy Factory Reviews (The Netherlands)

 

Hi everyone

The twelfth and thirteenth rooms that we played on our May/June 2024 child-free trip to Holland was Hunting Season and The Toy Factory at Tales of Torchdale, located in Zoersel, about a 35 minute bus ride from the centre of Antwerp.

My wife and I played these rooms as a duo. I had heard great things about The Toy Factory in particular, so we added a couple of days to our trip in Antwerp both to play these rooms but to also check out Antwerp city. I am really glad we did because Antwerp was beautiful and the statue Nello & Patrasche was phenomenal:

You can see that the cobblestones are wrapped up and over the sleeping boy and dog. We loved it.

I had read that at peak hour, catching an uber from Antwerp was difficult, so we decided to jump on a bus. This worked out well, although I had to allow extra time because were capturing public transport, which meant that we arrived very early and ended up standing in light rain outside Tales of Torchdale. The setting for Tales of Torchdale is a lovely old town with lots of wild flowers and animals, so there were worse places to be.

Hunting Season and The Toy Factory were our 302^nd and 303^rd rooms and here is what we thought:

Hunting Season – Room 302

• Hunting Season, which I understand has now closed, was an older room that I would describe as being a more gen 2 or gen 3 room. It was certainly not as high tech as many other rooms that we played on our trip;
• the experience starts in a cosy home, which we have broken into. The quality of the theming is strong. There are some nice puzzles and hide and seek fun, which we enjoyed;
• at about the half-way point, the mood of the room shifts and becomes much darker. There was one very short/minor character interaction, but there were very few jump scares or anything overly scary really at all;
• I remember a couple of really interesting puzzles in the end of the experience, one of which I apparently brute forced (I used one tool in a way that it wasn’t designed to be used); and
• We escaped Hunting Season with just over 5 minutes left on the clock.

Overall, Hunting Season was a solid room. The backstory was fine and the theming and puzzles were also good. We could see though why they had decided to retire the room, as it was ageing and it didn’t really keep up with other rooms out in the market.

The Toy Factory – Room 303

• This was the room we had travelled all the way to Antwerp to play. And I am really glad that we did;
• our game master, Emree, was our favourite GM of the trip. He was a young guy who was completely engaged in his experience and he had us laughing very quickly;
• the quality of this room is excellent. The theming of each space is so well done – it was amazing that on the other side of the door from our experience was a very quiet, suburban street in the middle of nowhere. The quality of the set, the props and puzzles was impressive;
• the storyline was also very strong and was woven seamlessly throughout the experience. The only live actor interaction was at the very beginning and then again at the very end of the experience, but we enjoyed that aspect the most;
• the puzzles in The Toy Factory were also excellent – really varied, generally medium level difficulty and all were really satisfying to solve. One of the most impressive puzzles is more of a dexterity puzzle, which we both thought was great fun; and
• there was one moment of separation, which was more eerie than scary. It involved a communication puzzle which was tricky, given it was hard to hear each other. But we did manage to solve it and ultimately escaped in 63 minutes of a possible 75 minutes.

The Toy Factory was easily one of the best rooms we played on our trip. The quality of the room design, theming and puzzles were excellent, as was the fun live actor interaction. The Toy Factory debuted at #16 on TERPECA a few years ago and currently sits at #45. I think it deserves that spot (or even a top 30 spot). It’s a brilliant room! I was still finding ‘items’ in my hair and clothes a few days afterwards… 😊

Where:                 Herentalsebaan 47, Zoersel, België

Duration:            60 – 90 minutes

Themes:              2 themes

TERPECA:          The Toy Factory: #45 in 2024 (formerly #16)

Price:                     169€ per team

Overall Rating:     Toy Factory was a superb room (and our favourite GM of the trip)

More details:         https://torchdale.be/en/home