Amsterdam, Apr 2024
The top rooms in the Netherlands tend to sell out weeks or months in advance, and even booking six weeks ahead of time we were very fortunate to be able to grab a weekend slot for The Alchemist. Because although it wasn’t the game for which we’d decided to visit the Netherlands, for me it was the exquisite highlight of the trip.
The experience here is carefully crafted from the start, including the briefing and even the confirmation email, which are used to set up the story and the scene. Sherlocked are based in a big historical building, which lends atmosphere too, at the cost of climbing some stairs.
I’ve written previously about how I really appreciate beauty in an escape room, where the designer goes the extra mile to build something aesthetically outstanding. Few escape rooms exemplify that as much as The Alchemist. It’s gorgeous on a macro and micro scale, immediately striking and full of no end of extra embellishments and polishes.
Nor is this game purely eye candy. I really enjoyed the puzzles, which include some interesting and fairly novel ideas. Where our team split up to work on things in parallel I got FOMO over the bits I wasn’t seeing, because each step here was distinctive and clever. Quality is emphasised over quantity, with a relatively low number of puzzles, but with each one a carefully crafted multi-step challenge that feels meaningful and holds together with impeccable logic.
My only criticism was that I wanted more. The official game time is 90 minutes, but if you’re playing efficiently you may finish comfortably under that; we took about an hour. It didn’t feel short of content but when it’s this good the more the better.
Also remarkable was the sense of theatre, from the immersive start through to the lovely ending. It’s a fairly straightforward plot line, but everything neatly ties into it, and the reveals are beautiful.
The Alchemist is as precise and polished and pleasing as an antique watch, and is among my very favourite games of all time. Even in a country with as many world class escape rooms as the Netherlands, this is a must play. 
