Mechelen, Apr 2024
From the name I guessed this would be a sequel to Saint Rumoldus, but it is in fact a stand-alone story. And a thoroughly original one too – pretty sure it’s the first time I’ve entered a room playing the role of air conditioning maintenance worker.
Hans’ Revenge placed in the worldwide top ten TERPECAs for 2023, so expectations were high. And there’s an instant slickness as the game begins, not just the high production quality of the intro video but the way you’re directed from one space to another. That quality of the build only improves as the game continues. It’s the type of decor where everything is immobilised other than the items you need to move, but done skilfully enough that it looks very natural.
We played as a two, and not especially quickly – the puzzles were entirely logical, I just found it took me a while to think along the right lines for several of them. It felt like the host was prompting us sooner than I’d have liked, but in retrospect I can see why – because there’s no time to lose. There’s more content in this 70 minute room than in many of the 90 minute games I’ve played, and we only finished ‘in time’ because the host sneakily added extra time onto the clock for us before it ran out.
Although there’s a great deal to do, I wouldn’t describe it as a puzzle-centric or intellectual style of room. In fact, around the midway point I was getting a bit dubious about the puzzles, after three in a row that weren’t entirely to my taste. However, from that point it the game only got more epic, amping up the experience in both visuals and content.
The qualities that make Hans’ Revenge a standout game are action, spectacle and story. It’s very strong on narrative, with a plot line that’s both original and entertainingly silly in the way it leads from the mundane to the intentionally melodramatic. In a similar way, the game starts deceptively straightforward and builds to a suitably epic and dramatic finish.
For that, and for the sheer quantity of game to get through, it deserves its reputation. I’d recommend taking a group larger than 2 if you can, since playing as a pair became increasingly rushed – though simply solving the earlier stages more efficiently than we did would also be a good option. 
