Madness Toledo - The Mystery of Scum Island Review (Toledo, Spain)

Hi all

One of my favourite rooms that we played on our November-December 2024 trip to Athens and Spain was The Mystery of Scum Island at Madness Toledo.

The room is located in Toledo, which is a little under a 1 hour drive from Madrid. We were rushing from room to room that day, so we bit the bullet and took an uber from Madrid to Toledo. However, ubers do not run from Toledo back to Madrid, so we paid handsomely for a taxi in the evening to take us back to Madrid (where we had another escape room booked).

The Mystery of Scum Island is a room based on my all-time favourite 1990s PC adventure games, The Monkey Island series. I fondly remember playing The Secret of Monkey Island in early high school – I had played many Sierra and LucasArts games back then: the whole Kings Quest series, Sam and Max Hit the Road, Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, Indiana Jones, Leisure Suit Larry, the list goes on. But my favourite was Monkey Island – trying over and over again to beat Le Chuck, figuring our how to make sea shanties rhyme with oranges and trying to figure out the game designers’ fascination with voodoo, grog and rubber chickens…

It was a fantastic game series and I was incredibly excited to play this room (I even wore my  favourite Monkey Island t-shirt :-)

The Mystery of Scum Island was my 345^th room to date and here is what I thought:

• this room was a complete joy to play. The quality of the theming was excellent. The use of sounds and music really helped to bring the world of Monkey Island to life;

• the room included interaction with a skull, who played the role of our Game Master. The voice actor did a fantastic job;

• the room design is a non-linear room, which allowed us to split up a little to investigate different spaces. Given though there were only 2 of us, we largely solved the puzzles together. And speaking of puzzles, I thought they were all a lot of fun to solve. They were also a nice mix of hunt and seek fun, more traditional puzzles and some higher tech puzzles and even computer-based interactive puzzles;

• the reason though that I loved this room so much is because the nostalgia. I really felt like I was inside the Monkey Island world and playing the role of a pirate. There was one puzzle in particular that was so incredibly clever and nostalgic that I would have given this room a huge rating purely for that puzzle alone. As soon as I glimpsed the puzzle, I smiled and laughed and knew I would never forget it.

The only criticism I had of the room is that I would have liked to have spent more time on a hunt and seek element, given we finished the room early and had plenty of spare time. It wasn’t clear from the room design that there were additional hunt and seek elements that we could have chosen to spend time on. This was a minor criticism though of what was a brilliant room.

Overall thoughts

If I judged rooms purely on fun, this was probably my favourite escape room of the entire trip. I suspect that many other enthusiasts who have played The Mystery of Scum Island grew up playing Monkey Island like I did, which is no doubt why this room debuted at 27 on the TERPECA list. I suspect the room would not have been quite as fun if you are not a Monkey Island fan, but even then the quality of the theming and puzzles was excellent. After playing the room, I later learned that it had been designed by the team that also designed Mayto Kingdom’s rooms. They are incredibly talented designers.

In sad news, The Mystery of Scum Island has closed its doors. I had heard rumours before we played that it might be closing and I am incredibly grateful that we managed to play it during its run.

Where:                Calle Nueva 5, 45001 Toledo, Spain

Duration:             90 minutes

TERPECA:          152 in 2024 (previously 27)

Themes:              Closed

Overall Rating:   A nostalgic joyful game that I didn’t want to end

More details:       https://www.madnesstoledo.es/