Lucardo Manchester: Space Evader

It's really hard but an exceptional escape room experience. 

Played as a team of two, which I would not recommend. There was lots do as is normal which collection games, but at least with others I have played you have the entire hour to attempt all the puzzles. This game did not work this way, which left us feeling like we were having the carrot dangled in front of us and we were being shoehorned into each section with not enough time to take in the game.

The theming and attention to detail was truly incredible, but it very much felt like they only wanted us to see half the game and pay to come back again and play the rest, which let our experience down.

If you're following the new emerging phase of escape rooms that is "collection games" then I'd recommend playing Lucardos twist on it. 

We enjoyed the game, although we did feel there was an enormous amount do to, and it was very pushy "that we could play again" As much as I like the idea of playing again, I kinda felt let down. I understand this isn't a traditional escape room.. but I felt it lost the satisfaction of completing your game. 

On top of this - After playing the other collection games in the UK where you're allowed 60 minutes and you get to solve puzzles in your own time - this is a very different experience where you're herded through zones, leaving behind any puzzles you haven't completed and being presented with a whole new room. 

Although the room looked incredible, this unfortunately, isn't everything and couldn't make up for being moved on, leaving a sense that we'd missed out on puzzles.

I've enjoyed Lucards other rooms, but this felt like it just didn't hit the mark with your normal players - Maybe different for puzzle enthusiasts 

The new Space Evader room at Lucardo is super high-tech and looks very impressive. The puzzles themselves are enjoyable and very on-theme, however we did leave feeling ever so slightly disappointed as there were just so many puzzles, there were some we didn't get a chance to even look at despite racing through the puzzles as two very experienced players. I understand the room has to cater to groups of all sizes and so needs enough puzzles to still be challenging for larger teams, however as I say, we just left a little disappointed as there was no chance we could have ever solved them all even though we were speeding through them super quickly. This also meant that we never worked on a puzzle together because there was so much to get through. We missed that sense of accomplishment and the satisfying nature of having all the puzzles solved and all the loose ends tied up at the end of the game. The game was still fun but I would just recommend playing as a bigger team.

One thing I would also mention is that one of the puzzles was incredibly difficult to see due to the low lighting in the room, so much so that we could not actually complete the puzzle (I have pretty good eyesight!). Afterwards the GM said 'oh you could have used your torch' but there was no torch provided. They specified that you could have used your phone torch ('I didn't tell you that you weren't allowed to use your phone!') but as most games do not allow phone use, we had our phones stored in the lockers outside of the game. If a torch is necessary to complete a puzzle, one should be provided (very easy fix) or it should be clear that you can take your phone into the room and use it.

There are so many puzzles in here and enthusiasts will love that sense of getting maximum puzzling time; we loved the sheer volume of things to do and that's the real selling point, particularly as a team of two who like to see and do everything.

Saying that, I can see why this would be a really frustrating game for some; you can't go back on yourself to solve something you missed earlier and we were kicking ourselves over one earlier puzzle that we just ran out of time for.

We had a great time in here but I imagine it's a bit of a love-it-or-hate-it one.  There's the odd solution that we found a little obscure but the vast majority are good, with the emphasis on quantity. Good fun and the set looks great.

This was great fun - keeps you very busy as a pair, we did not manage to complete all the puzzles although we were not far off. Engaged host who gave us a good tour of the bits we had missed at the end. Recommended.