Riga, Jul 2017
Another Riga heist game, and this time we had to steal a diamond hidden in an art gallery.
The decor was mixed; the first sections felt reasonably authentic, whereas the last two rooms definitely felt artificial.
There was a a good mixture of puzzles, including several physical ones, one of which was made more fun because it actively required teamwork. However the majority of the puzzles were incongruous with the theme so it did feel more like a puzzle room rather than a robbery.
The room was also slightly let down by technical faults (an electronic item ran out of power, and some of the buttons didn’t appear to work properly).
However overall an enjoyable room and worth doing. 
This was again a very impressive heist game with an impressive set, though in this case with some more artificial ways of progressing that moved away from the naturalistic style we’d seen in other heist games here, towards a more traditional puzzle-based design.
I’m not sure it’s true that the buttons Sam refers to had a failure – our other team had no problem with them so I could believe that one was player failure. On the other hand, any game that uses a battery-powered piece of equipment really needs to make sure it’s not in danger of running out of juice midway through a game! But I found this game mostly solid and free of problems, other than an early task involving colours and a dark environment that seemed unnecessary fiddly and awkward.
Note that Robbery requires a higher standard of physical ability than most games – though chances are the operators could remove this requirement on request for less physically able players.
The game’s biggest strength, along with the large and elaborate set, is the variety and inventiveness of tasks. The designers seem to have gone out of their way to include many different types of puzzle and task, and while many of them are artificial from a purist immersion point of view, they’re also a lot of fun. 
