Game Over Dubai: Money Heist

Our experience began with the host turning up late, unlocking the building and wandering around with all the doors to the other games open whilst we stood waiting in reception. We were handed a sheet of laminated paper and told to “read this”- which we realised was meant to be our briefing. Trying to keep enthusiastic as this was the start to a birthday day out, one of us read the briefing out to the rest of our group whilst the games master sat silently behind the desk. Only when we’d read it and were waiting for something to happen did she then get up and lead us up some stairs in more silence and to the door of the room. There was a very quick and unenthusiastic conversation where she asked if we’d done an escape room before. She then opened the door, proceeding to do the first puzzle right in front of us to go and do something in the room before we entered, with the door wide open behind her.

Throughout the experience it was evident our GM wasn’t watching. We completed puzzles and would receive clues about these puzzles shortly after. Not only this, one of our team completed a required action in the room and it was a few minutes later we were told to exit the area we were in and complete it again - I’m unsure if this was because she hadn’t seen us do it or something else, but we performed the action exactly the same and it was fine the second time. This bit was very ambiguous, I’m not too sure what happened so I don’t want to assume anything but it was frustrating nonetheless. 

Finally, the exit. We opened what we had guessed was the final door and came out into the hallway to silence and no one. Our host seemed confused and unprepared, and didn’t make any move to come over from where she was sat behind the desk in reception. So feeling confused, disappointed and very much like it had been a complete anti-climax, we walked down the stairs ourselves to reception.

No “how did it go?” No “did you enjoy it?” from our GM. We asked for our time and we were told to work it out ourselves, she told us an approximate time we’d gone in and then trailed off, leaving us to look at our watches and make a guess. We weren’t told any leaderboards, how well/badly we did, no jokes made about any aspects… it wasn’t until we walked out feeling confused and disappointed that we realised we weren’t even offered a team photo.

The room itself could have been good- but our experience was ruined completely by our GM and incredibly bad hosting.