Illuminati Escape Rossio: O Ritual

O Ritual is now the oldest escape room available in Lisbon, being close to a decade old, and is located very centrally by the Rossio plaza. The company now also runs a sequel, but require you to have played the first game before trying the second; both follow the company’s Illuminati secret society theming.

One warning up front: take a charged smartphone, or at least make sure that someone in your team has one. Playing this game without access to a torch or calculator app would count as doing it on the ‘extreme’ difficulty level.

You might guess from that that the lighting levels are pretty low, and they are, though much more during some sections than others. It’s a fairly simple set made more atmospheric by dim lights, but helped a great deal by the background audio, which went a long way to putting us in the story. That story is simple: you are prospective initiates to the Illuminati, proving your worthiness to join.

The codes and ciphers were fine without being the highlight. In places it felt like we were trying tenuous solutions, on the off chance – but each time we did, it turned out to be correct, so arguably they were just the right degree of tenuous. What I did really enjoy about the puzzles was how authentic they felt. The style of writing in text hints and the layering of symbolism in the answers seemed to capture the style of Freemasonry writings, with a mix of astrology and alchemical mysticism.

The game is also bookended with a bit of acting (as the pre-game instructions will tell you), and this also really helps make it work as an experience.

I was expecting an old-fashioned game, and it was; but it exceeded expectations in the overall experience, thanks to how thoroughly they embraced the secret society theme. The actual core of the game is dark, involves plenty of padlocks, and seemed to have one or two ghost puzzles – but as long as you have phone torches to fall back on it shouldn’t be frustrating, and it still added up to a sufficiently good game that I’d happily book into the sequel next time I’m in the area.