Escape Hunt Reading: Alice In Puzzleland

Basically just a ripoff of the old Time Trap game with similar theming, but done so much worse. 

Overview: Good looking game with easy, but illogically linked puzzles, some disrepair/fixes needed with poor lighting & temperature control.

Negatives:

- Hint system wasn't greatly integrated. An audio feed from the GM in character didn't fully translate. There wasn't much in the way of signposting to the next puzzle and we had to rely on asking for help whenever the next puzzle was unclear. The puzzles themselves were quite easy, so little sense of achievement.

- Way too hot (and unable to be adjusted), to the point where my throat went dry and I just wanted to get out to have a drink! The lighting was also so poor that it made reading or seeing any pattern/colour differences impossible for me.

- Quite a bit of disrepair: For example, at least 3 of these led to us wondering if we needed to use a broken piece, not use it or fix it somehow (distracting from the real puzzles) One puzzle was supposedly colour coded, but the paint was so dull and worn that it barely appeared coloured at all (especially in the very low light) Another had broken completely requiring narrower than most adult-sized hands areas to be accessed - not fun. For a company this size with people dedicated to upkeep of the rooms, this seems poor.

Positives:

- Our host, Grace was welcoming, helpful (before, during and after the game) and happy to discuss everything (without her, it possibly would have been a lower score)

- It was well themed, very clearly in Wonderland/Puzzleland. Visually very pleasant - Nice props & artwork throughout and soothing background audio throughout.

- Though the puzzles weren't that well linked, there were some good ideas and we enjoyed the wordy ones.

This should have been a really good room, as it has potential, however a lot of the tech was either totally broken or flawed. A lot of time was wasted thinking a solution was wrong when actually it just hadn't triggered what it should and we ended up having to explain solutions to the GM over the tannoy so they could manually override catches when we did have the solution right, or just having to fiddle with putting the same thing into a the same place multiple times to get it to trigger. Real shame.