Oh man, is it that time again? Is it time for ANOTHER INTERNATIONAL ESCAPE ROOM TRIP?! HECK YES IT IS!

We have embarked to Barcelona, home of many Terpeca worthy games.

This year, both my friend, Errol, and I are writing blogs. He says it’s a competition. Because he has to make everything a competition. Should at least be fun to compare notes!

The most exciting thing is to be able to see my friends again! For this trip, I am joined by:

Errol: Puzzle Designer and Giant Troll. He is occasionally useful in rooms and always looking for actors to troll

Lizette: Our main organizer and also Errol’s sister. She is very perceptive in escape rooms when she is not scared or being trolled by Errol, which isn’t often.

Margaux: Escape enthusiast and our other main organizer. Everyone needs a Margaux in a room (especially with ladders).

Myra: Awesome and quiet puzzle designer and solver. When I manage to stop panicking and listen to her, she is always right.

Philip: Escape Enthusiast who came all the way from Australia! We’ve known each other for years from playing online escapes together but this is the first time we have met in  person!

We  call ourselves Team Totoro! I think this the most of our team we’ve managed to get in one place! Margaux even brought pins for all of us!

Okay, first things first. How is the trip overall going:

Frizz Status: Manageable

As with other international trips, I struggle to find a travel sized hair mousse. So far, apart from crazed flyaways, my mound of frizz is contained to a pony tail.

Canadian Tourist Findings

A few trips in now, I found I have really upped my packing game. Oh, except I failed to bring some sort of light jacket to deal with the cooler mornings and evenings. Consarnnit!

Apparently Barcelona, along with many other cities in Europe, hates tourists. There is even a sign outside our hotel. I can’t say I blame them. Even though it isn’t pique season, things are pretty crowded. The actual locals I’ve met,though, have been very nice.

This is my first  trip where language barriers are more of a thing. For the last 3 months I have been doing Spanish lessons on Duolingo (I do know they speak Catalan in Barcelona but apart from a few phrases, lessons are harder to come by). I have been able to use my Spanish a total of 2 times.The other 20 times, the locals listen to my Spanish and just choose to start speaking English to me. I want to be better than that, but I feel so relieved I give in  pretty quickly.

All the travel guides I watched/read beforehand said that pickpocketing was a common thing in Barcelona. So of course I look like the most paranoid tourist ever, clutching my bag close whenever I am in crowds. I have not been pickpocketed yet.

Tapas! They are amazing! I can’t go back to full meals after this!

There are too many mountainous hills in Barcelona that do not suit my Southern Ontario flat ground trained legs. I do believe my legs  are about to fall off. They even have outdoor escalators in parts of Barcelona to deal with the hilly insanity!

We started our day at Park Guell. I fully went into full Dumb Tourist mode, taking photos of every object from every angle and likely will never look at most of them again. But I couldn’t help it! It was all so pretty!

We then walked over to the Sagrada Familia which…holy crap…I mean, maybe I haven’t seen enough grand churches, but this church quite literally took my breath away. AND  there are cryptography ciphers carved into the stone! What mysteries could these be?! And why has no one done an escape room about it?!

This is going to sound weird but I got confused at how water bottle caps work in Europe. They don’t completely come off, instead hanging on by 2 little plastic pieces. I kept thinking I had screwed up somehow and needed to tear the rest of the lid off.

Now…the actual escapes:

Golden Pop Games: Jurasico

Our first stop was Golden Pop’s Jurasico, a contender on the Terpaca list. Golden Pop’s facade and lobby mimicked that of a movie theatre, which was perfect for its movie themed rooms. Equally impressive was the energy of our game host Tomas, who literally burst into the room excitedly asking what movie we would see.

From there he morphed into the NPC of our game, which was set on the island of Jurassic Paaa..I mean,  Jurasico. Certainly not Jurassic Park. Our team was  tasked  with finding an egg to bring back to probably sell on the black market. Of course, dinosaura related shenanigans ensue.

Whether you are  a fan of  Jurassic Park or not, you should absolutely play this game.

The good? The set. Oh my gosh, the set. We were warned beforehand that there were live flora and fauna in the room, and I was confused what they meant, only to learn it was exactly that: This particular escape room doubles  as a green house. How the designers were able to work a natural environment into an escape room is astounding, and absolutely added so much to the atmosphere.

This meant too, though, that it was a somewhat muddy/dirty game, and I definitely had to wash up after and  do laundry.

That was another great part: the “cinematics” of the game. If you know the move, you know what iconic moments to expect, and this game does not disappoint. There was one moment in particular that did quite well to build the suspense.

The puzzles themselves were mostly simple, which is not a bad thing, but I do think we had too many players as we were often bottlenecked, with 1 or 2 people solving the puzzles while the rest waited around.

There was one in particular that was task based that we sent Errol out to. It ended up leading to a big cinematic moment that unfortunately meant the rest of us missed out, which was a shame, because it sounded awesome to experience.

There were points where the puzzles felt “gamey” for the setting we were in, but thinking back on it they did actually all make sense to the narrative that had been set up, which I appreciated. There were a couple of moments that didn’t seem to make sense but these were minor and didn’t take away from the experience.

Our game host, Tomas, continued to be fantastic through the experience, giving us nudges in character if we were taking too long with a puzzle and keeping up that energy through the whole two hour game.

Overall, this is a must play in Barcelona. The atmosphere and physical experience they achieved is amazing. Just… remember to wear clothes and shoes you don’t care about.

Unreal Sant Martí Room Escape: Distrito 111

District 111 started with the classic “cold open”, where the game begins as soon as you enter the facility. In our case,  we were invited into what looked like a bunker and immediately given instructions to steal an energy source from some  rebels who want to keep it for themselves. Rotten rebels.

As with Jurasico, the set for District 111 is very detailed and fun. And, a bit dirty, of course. There were also a few more physical challenges for us to tackle, including climbing challenges that I wasn’t a huge fan of, but that’s mostly due to my own hangups. Some of these physical aspects though were unique and a lot of fun to be able to do in an escape room.

The puzzles in this room were…okay. They worked and mostly made sense which is the important thing! But there was one in particular that I felt was a little too “hidden” and made no sense narratively. This actually could be fixed with some minor adjustments.

Our host was again lovely and chatted with us after, and his love of the industry was apparent. Unfortunately I forgot his name! But he was very nice :).

Local Trends

We’ve only done 2 escapes so far, so I don’t know if these are trends yet, but I couldn’t help but notice some similarities:

Both games had incredibly detailed sets.

Both games had moments of doing tasks you would not normally expect in escape rooms (knocking things down, cutting things, etc.).

Both games were loosely (maybe more than loosely) based on licensed products.

Both games’ main goals involved stealing something.

As in the Netherlands, no waivers were signed for either of our rooms, and there  were a  few tasks that were very physical where I worried a bit about hurting myself like the clutz I am.