Umeplay Shanghai: Corrupt Muse

This is a review of Corrupt Muse that was originally created by Dreamland Traveller in Guangzhou. It became an instant hit, which is why Umeplay bought the rights to recreate it. I played a Umeplay version in Shanghai (unlike Heiner’s team that played the original version in Guangzhou) and despite it not being a Umeplay’s original creation, this game fits its original philosophy very well, so I will use this review partly as a way of introducing Umeplay.

Umeplay is a very distinctive company from China with the biggest presence in Shanghai, but they also have branches in multiple other cities. They take the philosophy of designing highly cinematic experiences to the extreme. In their games players have basically zero agency, the whole focus is on cinematics. While in more traditional escape rooms you sometimes experiences some “cutscenes” with actors, you may think of Umeplay games as singular ~1.5h cutscenes. The defining lines of what constitutes an escape room are nowadays quite blurry and their experiences are much more accurately described as cinematic shows/immersive theaters rather than escape rooms, but whatever you decide to call them, they are amazing experiences that multiple escape room fans will be thrilled to play. There is a lot of dialogue by actors, but players are not really expected to interact with them that much – they are more of passive observers than active players. Beware that this type of experience will not be for everybody, but if you appreciate cinematics in the slightest and accurately set your expectations, you will be blown away. Multiple TERPECA winners claim that they want players to feel like they are in a real world movie and Umeplay is the company that decided to take that statement to its limits. For multiple of their games there is even a very nice pre-game touch emphasizing that players are entering their own movie!