Online, Sep 2020
Having played one remote avatar game at Escape Experience Chattanooga, I was lured back to try another primarily because this one is set on a real train. The train in question is parked in local attraction Chattanooga Choo Choo, and doesn’t actually move, though the game decor has a few tricks to give the illusion that it does. The advantage of the setting was reduced a little by playing over livestream, but still helped build authenticity.
Despite the name this train isn’t running out of control; rather, your avatar is fleeing the mob, and needs to find a way off the train before both it and he reach their final destinations. In fact, the setting is more or less a novel twist on a prison escape premise.
In style of gameplay this is quite a classic escape room, with a mixture of padlock codes and some physical tasks. As with their Vaccine game, my impression was that several tasks would have been better played in person. This was particularly true of one puzzle, where the way it was presented in the inventory system effectively short-cut a large part of it. That was absolutely a sensible decision, since it would have been too slow and cumbersome to perform via the bottleneck of the avatar, but still felt a bit truncated as a result.
Of the two games I’ve played at Escape Experience I found the venue’s Vaccine game appealed to me slightly more, though it’s more a matter of taste than of one having a clear edge over the other. Despite the perilous premise Runaway Train Transport has a cheerful feel to its gameplay, a very solid remote escape room with a distinctive set, solid puzzle design and good inventory system. 