The Paradox Project: The Mansion

This was our first out of the Paradox project rooms so we were trying to temper our expectations. It’s hard to do when it’s such a highly ranked and esteemed company. 

The scale is impressive and is definitely an exciting experience when you’re used to UK sized ER‘s! We had a fun start to this ER and enjoyed how the puzzles were progressing. However, roughly 25 minutes in, we came to what felt like a dead end. We required many, many hints from the GM to get through a painfully long puzzle. The clue system is fun though. I had an enjoyable interaction with the GM during this stressful part. Once we’d finally moved on we flew through a few puzzles in a row, before once again hitting a dead-end. We once again had to ask for many hints to get any resolution. Usually, we get a hint and go ‘ahhh! Whoops, our bad’ as it’s our error yet each time we were thinking ‘why, how, what?!?’. There is one part to the ER where we’re put aside to allow for a reset of the ER whilst we’re getting increasingly frustrated in the midst of a non-sensical puzzle’. It’s weird to come out of a space, back into a space you’ve previously explored, to see it reset. It kind of killed the immersion for me. 

At the end, we apologised for needing so many hints. The GM’s words were ‘it’s not possible to do this without hints’. Shouldn’t every ER have that option though? We don’t care about hints. In fact, our perfectly rehearsed comments before an ER are “we’re not proud, give us a hint when we need one”, followed by me joking that I’ll be waving to the cameras for help. We love help! But if the GM’s know it can’t be completed without any help, then change the puzzles, please! 

As others have noted, this room is showing its age a bit.  I found a couple of the puzzles to be a bit illogical which is why it doesn't get a higher rating, but it was very cool to have a whole house to explore and solve instead of just a room or two.

I think that when this game came out, it would have been spectacular. 
Now (2022) there is nothing that really stands out, other than the length of the game.
I must give credit to starting the story, and the open way the game starts.

However, props are tired, tropes that are now seen in all escape rooms, and for me there were two key parts (let's call them subrooms) that were just very frustrating. 

If you plan to play all of Paradox's games, give it a go. If you are there and not doing all three, I am not sure I can recommend this.

As with the other paradox project rooms I think it could do with being shorter. 

A stunning, huge game with the widest variety of puzzles imaginable. We loved that one of the main focuses is the advancement of the story, which is really easy to lose sometimes and we particularly loved the ending.