Shame on me! My sister and her boyfriend are always going to escape rooms and stating how fun they are, but I admit that when I was told that as part of my birthday present I would be going to a local escape room with them and my father I wasn't that excited. I should have been more excited though, as this turned out to be a great time that made me feel like I was inside a survival horror video game (minus any enemies).
The escape room we went for was titled Dead on Arrival, rated five out of five stars for difficulty, and three out of five scare factor, and apparently just a 13% escape rate. As we arrived I overheard the previous group saying they had failed the room, and with me and my father having no real idea what to expect with an escape room, I expected we wouldn't survive. After being led blindfolded to the escape room, the introduction story plays out over a speaker. The set-up states that we had gone to hospital after an accident and family members had been told the injuries were not major. For some reason able to hear the room around us but unable to move or respond, we are alarmed when the heart rate monitor goes wild and our family are told we have sadly passed away. Awakening some time later, we find ourselves in a morgue, with it soon dawning on us that our death was faked in order to sell us to some type of dark web buyer. We are given an hour to escape the room before our captor returns to deal with us.
As films such as Escape Room and...well, Escape Room had already taught me, this is made up of a series of rooms, rather than literally one room. I found that rather than abstract solutions to puzzles, it all revolved around unlocking various types of locks that are sealing doors, drawers, and cupboards shut. Different to what I had expected, we were able to ask for hints at any time, seemingly infinitely should need be. I think that we asked around four times for hints, including the very first room that to my knowledge contained the most obscure puzzle of the whole lot, that didn't instil much hope of us escaping. Obviously, I'm not going to go into too much detail on the puzzles for fear of spoiling, but there were some fun ones here, though also some that appeared a bit broken. A great one that took me straight back to the Resident Evil games saw us lining up a series of x-ray photos to spell out a number, but some of the photos seemed a bit faded, so we had to get a lot of assistance to get the numbers correct. My personal favourite had us in a security room having to enter a series of questions on a PC, with the added difficulty of the mouse and keyboard being portioned off, away from the screen. Initially a two person job, I realised that thanks to my long arms I was just about able to move the mouse and see the screen at the same time, making for a much quicker time with that part! Puzzles in general were not too difficult, the difficulty came more from not being sure how props worked, such as the process to turn off a fan in one room, and working out what the relevance of a locked away severed hand was. It was all a learning process though, going forward I will know more what to expect.
Finally with less than five minutes left, we escaped the cold morgue and its secret rooms via a narrow passageway. Truthfully, I found this a lot of fun. I had feared that constantly being watched by the games master over the cameras would make me feel a bit awkward and hesitant to give any suggestions, but the feel of being inside a survival horror video game removed that fear of embarrassment. As my first escape room experience, I enjoyed Dead on Arrival, especially as we were able to work together to solve the clues and escape!
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