The penultimate day! Sadly Lizette had to go back home due to work, and we did feel her absence (including the lack of screams, but see Errol’s blog for that).

If today was a day for anything, it was for history lessons and different styles. Strap in. This is a long post.

Tourist Trappings

Today I got up super early to make my way down to the Gothic Quarter and truly embrace my tourist ways. Because it was so early, 1. There were no tours available and 2. There were no crowds. The first point was easily solved with a self-guided audio tour I downloaded. The second point made me ecstatic.

The Gothic Quarter is officially one of my happy places. So many crazy stories and history! I am sad no Barcelona escape rooms base any of their rooms on these. I get the feeling they are bored of their history and would rather be Hollywood movies, but it could be an exciting way to give a local flair to room themes!

The Gothic Quarter also has the Mercat de la Boqueria, a big market selling all sorts of food. I love a good market and could probably spend hours here.

I also visited the Palau de la Musica Catalana, a music hall built to promote Catalan music and culture! More on that below!

I saw quite a few Halloween costumes today at a local shopping mall! Including Squid Game costumes. Kids watching Squid Games seems…weird to me. I did wonder if Halloween was much of a thing in Spain and it seems it is.

There is…so much ham in Spain. Myra is going nuts for it because it is so expensive in North America, specifically Jamon Iberico.

Local Trends

The one downside of having cold opens and no lobby spaces is planning the “before game” time properly so we are not just loitering around an escape room entrance for half an hour. For the most part there are some cafes nearby we can sit in, but occasionally it gets awkward in a more warehouse type area.

One thing I didn’t note: a good portion of the escape rooms have a bathroom available halfway through the experience, which was a relief to me especially given how long they can be. Always appreciated when the bathroom can be in theme as well.

Palau de la Musica Catalana

Our first stop of the day doubled as an escape room and tourist destination. Yes, Palau de la Musica Catalana has an escape room experience available. And it was about what we expected, with some pleasant surprises.

Our guide was Juan, who is one of the only guides who can run the game in English. He introduced our basic quest: it seems that a famous Catalan musician had gotten a hold of some plans for a weapon, and his good friend at the time, the creator of the music hall, helped him hide it. It was up to us to find the plans and destroy them.

The plot…I can’t help it. It makes me chuckle. Again we have a site rich and steeped in history and culture. And again we have an escape room plot focused on action adventure. I mean, if that’s what the people want, then so be it, but I kind of pictured something along the lines of Gabriel Knight 2, which involved finding a lost opera through puzzles while learning about the history of Bavaria. Maybe the plans in question could have been a Catalan opera that was threatened to be destroyed amidst attempts to wipe out Catalan culture! I swear, stories can be exciting without involving weapons or the fate of the world!

But enough about the plot. What about the actual game? The actual pieces itself were surprisingly built very solidly, a trait I have been noticing in all of the games we played. Juan would bring us to an area of the music hall, which would contain either a puzzle box or something to search for or both, and then we would solve it there before being hinted for the next location.

At first, Juan was very hand holdy, likely due to running the game for non-enthusiasts and I can see why. The puzzles are actually on the more challenging side, and fit within the musical theme. Soon though, Juan realized that we were solving at a faster rate than the average group and stood back to let us work more as time went on. There were definitely moments where he balked at us noticing colours or symbols on a prop, exclaiming “this puzzle usually takes people 20 minutes…”. That being said, we failed spectacularly once again with searching.

There were some fun physical interactions with the props and space. The coolest part was that we got to see a couple of parts of the music hall that are not always open to the public.

I would say more but unfortunately…I was struck down with an intense bout of nausea that forced me to sit out a lot of the experience. This was a shame, but there are worse places to sit out nausea than the Palau de la Musica.

In the end, we succeeded in our mission and had a fun, final interaction. Errol tried to eat the weapon plans, so you can rest assured that being in a respectable place will not stop Errol from being Errol.

I felt this experience could have been more, but for an escape room done at a Heritage site, it did actually exceed my expectations. Afterward, we chatted with Juan, who was enthusiastic to hear about our travels and share his own. We also got admission to explore the music hall on our own as part of our experience. We stayed a few minutes, but other escapes called!

Open Mind Escapes- 11S

Open Mind Escapes is aptly named because 11S is an escape room focused on the events of 9/11.

I will say this right off the top: if you are American, you will likely be triggered by this. If you are from New York or were personally affected by 9/11, you will definitely be triggered by it. There is no doubt it that 11S is a controversial game, and not everyone is going to think it should exist. But for that reason, I think it’s important it does exist.

The experience is split into two: the game proper followed by a memorial piece. Let’s go over the game first.

We played as First Responders in training in New York, and of course we are going to the tower to do a drill of some sort when the first strike comes.

What follows is an incredible sequence of events involving climbing down, crawling through, and even sometimes smashing through the collapsing building. We wore hard hats through the experience and they were very much needed.

The puzzles were a mixture of searching, communication, and some light aha puzzles. At first, it did feel a bit weird to have letter and number locks in a collapsing building solved by environmental cues which would not have been present before, but I started to view these metaphorically. These combo locks solved by the rubble lying around me could represent the effort it took to move the debris in rescue efforts. That may not have been the designer’s intention, but that’s what I read into it.

While it did feel weird to be having “fun” in an experience about 9/11, it was clear the intention was always to bring it back to the gravity of the situation. We got constant reminders that this was an event that was deeply affecting and changed everything. The beginning and end sequence of the game was my favourite. The beginning for its big set reveal which took my breath away, and the end for the attempt at emotional impact and hopeful message. I say attempt, because there were a couple of game elements that sort of took me out of it, but I was able to put these aside.

Afterward we were greeted by our host, Javi, who ran us through some facts about the game design and lead us to the memorial portion. This is where I learned that the characters I encountered in the game, were real people whom the designers had spoken to and gotten permission from to tell their stories. This did highlight the care the designers had taken to make sure that the material was treated.

There was also a video montage of the events, which did make me cry. However, I will say a couple of the videos/images used were too visceral and probably could be cut out without losing the message of the game. It also left me unsure how to feel, but…I think that’s a good thing.

Although it’s not perfect, I do think this game is an important step in the evolution of escape rooms, and a brave one. I am still hearing that we don’t tell important stories in escape rooms, but 11S represents a crucial move: someone wanted to tell an important story and used the medium they loved best to do so. It was eventually done with film, it was eventually done with video games, and hopefully we can continue to do it with escape rooms, bumpy as it may be along the way.

Plastic Robot Escape Rooms: Final Code Bermudas

Gosh, in comparison to 11S, Bermudas was practically all rainbows and sunshine. We were right back to the classic “uh oh, someone disappeared for mysterious science reasons” games.

Once again, there was some VERY light role play to convince our host, Gerard, to let us in. Gerard was my favourite actor of the entire trip, although Ainhoa from Day 2 came a close second. His performance as a neurotic and energetic scientist was spot on. He also not only put up with Errol’s walkie talkie conversation, but contributed to it (I think they were both singing Queen at some point).

Our room started in a fairly standard looking lab but then expanded out to an epic set piece, one that I had not seen (at least in the form it was presented to us in).

The puzzles were set up in a pretty linear way in small spaces, which once again meant to that a couple of us were left with not much to do. I didn’t really mind this as I could look around the set and maybe identify clues we could see later, but I can see it being frustrating for anyone who wants to stay involved in the solving.

There was also a clever mechanic for keeping track of our time that fit the theme very well. I always appreciate that if we do have to keep track of time, there is some attention to detail to deliver the information other than the “here is a timer, good luck” approach.

Overall, this one was a solid entry, despite the occasional bottleneck. I would call it a decently standard experience with an excellent actor.

Londium

Londium has barely been open three months and were already hearing murmurings about it so figured we would add it to our roster. In Londium, we were a random group who are taksed with helping a kidnapped scientist (I think…I am fuzzy on those details). We walked in pretty blind to this one and now that I have played …I have so many thoughts.

First off…Holy crap. Wow. As far as set design and build? Londium is a marvel. From it’s front facade of to the massive opening set piece to the tiniest props…the sheet amount of detail and craftsmanship that went into the steam punk theme game is mind boggling.

It was also just a solid build. There was never any question of whether levers worked or didn’t work. Apart from one sequence, feedback was pretty good. There were also a couple of fun reveals that allowed us to play in the set.

Puzzles generally followed the trend we have seen so far, with the exception of two, which were on the tougher side, and not necessarily in an enjoyable way. One puzzle in particular we got very quickly but only because someone on our team knew about the subject material already.

The whole first sequence was one of my favourites of the trip, and the game has a great, non-dialogue heavy sequence to introduce the villain. In fact, they had some great and simple moments throughout the experience to remind us of that villain’s presence.

These elements leave little doubt in me that it will be nominated for a Terpeca.

Except…

Except…despite the amazing set and the great moments of storytelling, the game doesn’t quite feel…complete.

For one, there is the end, or rather, lack thereof. We didn’t really get a full conclusion to our story, instead being greeted by the game host in a style that reminded me very much of the first escape rooms: ending it just after the climax with little to no closure over what happened to the other characters.

Before you say “not all escape rooms need story”, yes, you are right, but when the villain’s arc was built up for the ENTIRETY of the game, you can’t blame me for wanting some sort of resolution. aI didn’t expect a huge grandiose battle, but I did expect some sort of final confrontation. Instead, all of that wonderful setup never got paid off, leaving us with not knowing how to feel emotionally. I will probably do a larger blog post on this.

Then there was the pacing of the reveal. Discussing it after, we couldn’t help but compare the game to Taberna, which had progressively more grandiose sets interspersed with smaller, quieter sets. Londium had equally impressive sets, but they were revealed with the best one at the beginning, and got smaller as we went along.  It was kind of like the designers showed their hand too early.

What Londium did well, it did EXTREMELY well. And our host, Alex, did a great job. But I do feel it needs some adjustments with its pacing and the lack of a true ending made me feel that overall, some element was missing. We are really glad we went though.