Immersia: The Grand Immersia Hotel

*NB we did this one in person and not virtually*

I loved the room but had a terrible time.  Two of our players were inexperienced, and the use of telescape and the video components really confused them so one person left the game and the other never managed to figure out that she had to mute her video, and I feel like amid that chaos, the host didn't know what to do besides urge us to just move along with the story rather than stopping to address that.  So, I mean, I'm pretty sure it was a great room but actually I was really stressed and distracted while playing it.  A lot of companies use videos on telescape, and surely it's confusing for a lot of people.  And basically at this point, this company is only running remote games by request, at non-busy times.  So A) if I were them, I wouldn't bother to upgrade it, and B) it took a LOT of effort to finagle a time.  So if you're playing it, make your team really understand they have to mute, and that if they don't the other players can mute the device that's playing the zoom while they watch, so they don't have a wall of stressful echos.  

If you do this one, I recommend also doing the mystery hotel game by Project Avatar.  There are some neat points of comparison, but also you can see that using cut scenes works SO much better than videos on telescape.

An extensive and well-decorated set make this a very immersive experience--kind of sorry we didn't get to play it in person!  We found the game on the easier side of things, but to be fair we've done a lot of remote escapes at this point.  Extremely pleasant hosts who definitely added to the experience.  Recommended!

Best of the three Immersia and it really does deverve its TERPECA #58 place in 2020. Huge space and wonderfully decorated, with great use of video and telescape to build up the tension and develop the story. A must play room.