Cluefinders Liverpool: The City

Played this just before the pandamic hit. Not a great game in comparison to the other games they have, so I have kind of glad to hear the new owners had got rid of this game for something new. The theming was way too wacky and nothing made any sense. It was a bit of a puzzle graveyard. The other games are fab though,  so can't wait to see the new one.

We played The City in January before they officially released it to the public with only a dozen people having played it before us. We were so hyped at the idea of playing the third room of the designer who brought us Remy's Room and The Tomb but we left very disappointed. The story is: you missed your Magical Mystery Tour bus and need to find your way through Liverpool to get to the next bus stop... but unfortunately the room doesn't make you feel like you are searching your way through Liverpool nor running for the bus. There is no immersion at all, no music, no SFX, no real design apart from one wall, the rest is white and when looking up, you can clearly see that you are in a white room. I save you the disappointment already: there is only one room so all the puzzles and locks are already there in front of you. It's messy, it's sometimes a bit far-fetched and therefore it doesn't feel fun. Even puzzles that could have brought something to the room have been seen before but executed better. Despite paying full price, we felt like testers and not customers booking a fully tested and ready room as a key opened two locks resulting in us having a spare key and a wrong timeline of the puzzle resolution, (which feels quite linear, I would not see how 8 people could have fun in there). We escaped with 20 seconds to spare, but we felt like the game host (who was great) helped us out of the room on the last puzzle by giving us the code of the last lock. The difficulty of the room was certainly high but not because of the difficulty of resolving the puzzles or because of the amount of the puzzles but mostly because the logic of the room was not guiding us properly to resolving the puzzles promptly. Overall quite a disappointment when you see how good their other two rooms are. This could actually be a bad card to play for Cluefinders in case experienced customers come to that room first, they would probably not come back to try Remy's Room and The Tomb which would be a shame as I still believe they are both my favourite rooms I've played in Liverpool. I'm hoping they either redesigned the whole room or scrap the idea completely. Anyway, I love that company, so I wish them all the best!

A fair game that was quite linear, yet packed full of puzzles.