Escape Barcelona - K.O.N.G. Review (Barcelona, Spain)

Hi all

One memorable escape room that we checked out on our November-December 2024 trip to Athens and Spain was K.O.N.G. at Escape Barcelona.

We played a number of rooms at Escape Barcelona back to back. We started with K.O.N.G., and then played Alien The Origin and Akasha’s Legend (neither of which we enjoyed) and then we finished with Cybercity 2049. We thought K.O.N.G. and especially Cybercity 2049 were the best rooms on offer at Escape Barcelona.

K.O.N.G. was our 364^th room to date. K.O.N.G. was a really interesting room. Our experience was a little different to others’ I suspect - here is what I thought: 

• ·     as we were descending into the first space to start K.O.N.G., we had an issue with the power. It wasn't clear to us whether it was part of the experience. Within about the first 5 seconds (even as some of my team members were still entering the room), the power started doing funny things. Each of the locked doors throughout the experience opened. Again, we didn't know if this was intended or a technical issue, so we started exploring those areas (and in fact, I picked up some key cards from one of those spaces which I had for the rest of the experience). Suddenly a character joined us and started closing doors and then left and we were ready to recommence. It still wasn't clear what was going on. We learned after the experience that they had suffered a power outage as we were entering the room - rather than letting us know and resetting, they had us continue playing. I think that wasn't the right choice.

• ·     we also had a few puzzles/electronic items throughout the space that did not work. This was frustrating at the time. We were told at the end of the expeirence that it was due to the power outage, but a friend of mine who traveled to Barcelona and played K.O.N.G. a year later told me that he had the same issues with the same electronic items and puzzles. So I'm not so sure…

• ·     putting the false-start and technical issues to one side (which is hard to do as both greatly affected our experience), we otherwise enjoyed K.O.N.G.. The theming was excellent - the quality of the props and set design were all great.

• ·     the puzzles for the most part were also good, although there were some 'busy work' puzzles that felt like they were included just to pad out time. I think some refining of the puzzles could have made for a better experience, but overall the puzzles were fun.

• ·     there were some interesting methods of movement in K.O.N.G. that were cool (and which were a first for our team). There were also some interesting character interactions and cut scenes.

• ·     the main draw card and 'wow' factor though of K.O.N.G. is the ending, which is visually incredibly impressive. We all really enjoyed the climactic ending, which was a lot of fun (and made us feel like we were in a movie).  

K.O.N.G. was a really impressive room with great production value and a really impressive final Act. I thought the puzzles could have been refined and improved upon, but overall it was a fun experience. I thought the GMs made an error in not resetting our room after they had a power outage. To their credit, they only charged us 50% for the room, but the better call would have been to have started again. This necessarily impacted our enjoyment of the room, given a number of electronic elements did not work (and we had already seen some of the final spaces within the first few minutes of the experience). It is what it is though.

Where:                Carrer de Francesc Moragas, 18, 08922 Santa Coloma de Gramenet

Duration:            120-150 minutes

TERPECA:          10^th in 2024 (currently 34^th).

Themes:              5 themes

Overall Rating:   A fun room with very high production value      

More details:      https://www.escapebarcelona.com/en/kong-protocol.php