Phew…today…I feel battle hardened and grimy. Day 2 showed Barcelona is an intense physical challenge, both inside and outside of escape rooms.

Frizz Status: clean but unmanageable

I washed my hair today! But still have no product. And the combination of the humid rooms and rainy weather meant there was no hope for me.

Tourist Trappings

People in Barcelona must have calves of steel. These streets are insane. I did 25,000 steps yesterday. Almost all of them uphill. Today my body is moaning whenever I approach a hill. By the end of the week. I should be like the hulk.

Today we got to know Barcelona’s metro system more. And by “got to know”, I mean flounder hopelessly in. It was our unofficial first escape room. I think to deter tourists, Barcelona made itself impossible to navigate. Oh sure, we could find the ticket machine just fine, but then what kind of ticket? How many zones? Zones? What zones do they mean? Is there a map to show you? No. That would mean the tourists could find Barcelona. I think we spent €30 more per person on transit tickets trying to figure out the system. I now have a 10 ride pass, but just for 1 “zone”…I guess I will find out what that means.

There are some constants on a subway at least. People asking for money. Only in Barcelona, they also do so by offering lollipops to buy (or, “suckers”, which has kind of an appropriate double meaning).

One thing we have noticed our escape hosts asking is if we have any “doubts” about the escape room, and we realize they mean “questions”. Just kind of a fun translation quirk. Their English is still miles better than my Spanish.

Today I got to eat Barcelona seafood! And to complete the experience, we ate in a local cafe where a football game was being avidly watched and shouted/cheered at. And they seem only mildly annoyed we were there! Always a relief.

Proyecto Omega

This escape room was a last minute addition and was a bit further out than our other bookings, but boy am I glad we made the time for it.

This was another cold start room. As soon as we entered we learned we needed to find and save what appeared to be the entirety of the DC and Marvel universe.

The puzzles were quite clever and made sense to the narrative. There were definitely some hilariously macabre moments that I liked leaning into.

The set was impressive, especially given that a lot of it was made out of wood. I can always appreciate making a set that manages to make materials like wood look like a space age material.

This room had an actor who interacted with us. If you have read any of our previous travels or know Errol, you know this means he pretty much took over all interactions and would not stop talking for the next hour. This included, but was not limited to: telling jokes, berating Lizette, doing the Macarena, and asking about the character’s life story.

Our host and actor, Elena, is also the builder and  designer of the room (I believe her partner is the other designer)! She even showed us some behind the scenes magic. I am always in awe of the amount of wires.

This was recommended to us and a pleasant surprise. Super glad we started the day with this!

Escape Barcelona

We did 2 rooms at Escape Barcelona! First:

Cyber City

In Cyber City, we were told that in actuality, the world we knew was a lie, a construct we were hooked into. We could choose to accept the truth and try to save humanity or… let’s face it there was little other choice.

Escape Barcelona clearly puts a lot of effort into its sets, and Cyber City’s cyberpunk feel was spot on. It was kind of a mish of various cyberpunk stories, most prominently the Matrix. The expansive set was appropriately neon and full of grime, which I am pretty sure got over every inch of me. Again, don’t wear clothes you care about when doing…any room at Escape City, I am assuming.

There were some fun actor interactions as well, which Errol took full advantage of. Our host, Eric, leaned into his roles and put up with our shenanigans with grace. And all of the screams (see Errol’s blog for a scream count).

A lot of the puzzles were mostly task based, and were enjoyable to do. There was a lot of crawling and climbing to various buttons and outlets to move things along, and plenty of suspenseful moments.

In addition, Escape City seems to be a fan of multiple endings. For Cyber City, there were a few key actions we took which determined our ending. I am going to call these “Silent Hill” style choices, where you are not even aware you may be making a choice that could affect the ending. I am not sure how I feel about these…sometimes the reason we “failed” a task that I ended up determining our outcome was because we were still trying to figure out the mechanic. I would be curious to see stats on what endings are most frequently achieved.

Still, it was a fun experience with some epic sets. I would recommend.

Kong

Kong was rated pretty high up on the Terpecas for 2024 so we were pretty interested in what it had to offer.

As as the set and cinematic cutscenes, it was absolotely epic, especially the end sequence. This game also had my favourite opening scene of the games we have played so far, perfectly setting up the atmosphere.

Like Cyber City, the puzzles were heavily task based in Kong, many of them involving us shouting orders back and forth through a loud environment. I will admit, I hate these sorts of communication puzzles. A big echoey space and loud soundscapes usually means a frustrating time for me trying to get involved, and this was no exception.

There was one puzzle in particular that ended up determining our ending that failed because we struggled to understand the mechanics of what was going on and it was just so hard to hear each other. Again when that happens, I just kind of turn off, which is frustrating.

Narratively, there were things I would tweak, such as the order a key event happens in as well as the ending, which I was hoping would have a call back that never ended up happening. Overall, though, it was easy to follow and there were a couple of nice character moments in there.

I will say as well, I know it was supposed to help atmosphere but this room, as well as Cyber City, were just a little too dark throughout. I could see moments where the atmosphere and cinematic required it, but some of those puzzle moments got frustrating trying to squint into the darkness.

This was also the room where I started to FEEL the two hour mark. Toward the end, every time it felt like we had ramped up to a climax only to see another room, my tired brain would think “more puzzles?” Part of it might have been that this was one of my first two hour games, and that it was our third such game of the day.

I will say, those big cinematic action sequences were super fun and I have to commend Escape Barcelona for consistently having wow moments littered all throughout. And we had an end sequence that never slowed down in excitement.

I forgot to get the name of our host, but he was excellent !

Unreal Escape: Nakatomi Plaza

Our last escape of the night was a bit more traditional as far as puzzles but made just as good use of its space as the other rooms we did and was actually a perfect way to end our night. As usual, we had a cold open, which Errol leapt into.

We were agents tasked with breaking into the Nakatomi Hotel, where New Years parties and terrorist threats awaited us. Our game host, Aday, also played an NPC and brought a great flair and energy to the experience.

This game had the distinction of not only having an actor, but also costumes. There was no way Errol was not going to exploit this. Horror ensued. Aday took it all in with generous bemusement.

I think the best part of this room was the amount we got to “play”. Otherwise this felt like a “classic flavour” style of escape room, but everything was understandable and we had fun.

Local Trends

I forgot to mention this yesterday, but so far the rooms in Spain all begin EXACTLY at the booking time and not a moment before, so if you show up early, be prepared to either wait outside or find a nearby cafe. This is only a problem for us because we are in the habit of arriving 40 minutes early to games, so there is some adjustment on our part.

All 5 games we have played so far have been very loosely based on established properties. I am not sure if this is a Spain thing yet.

Ladders. I am coming to the conclusion that Barcelona loved making you crawl in the dirt or making you climb various ladders. I am good with neither.

I am solidifying my theory that Barcelona rooms love tactile mechanics. In almost every room we have done there is some element of “hey! Do this cool thing you would not normally get to do in an escape!”

Paying at the end of an is kind of a new experience for me, but I guess it can make sense…you also pay for dinner at the end as well.

So far, Barcelona seems to love to destroy our clothes. There was definitely laundry done after we were finished.