Porto, Nov 2025
Occultus has grown since our previous visit back in 2017 – they now have a second building across the street, and a total of eight different rooms. Their Batman theme is their latest, which was reason enough for us to choose it; our mission was to find the Caped Crusader.
That theme was easy to forget about for the earlier section of the game, which could easily be presented as a completely different setting with no superhero elements at all. The beginning was also the most puzzle-centric part, and was well suited to several players blitzing it in parallel – although the two of us solved it mostly sequentially and made a bit of a meal of it. The various code-based puzzles here were mostly solid enough, though in places invited over-thinking – for example, with one where you receive clue items a few at a time, which seem to match a couple of different things in the room, and it’s not initially clear at what point you’re able to do something with them.
From a single room with relatively traditional puzzles to solve, Gotham progresses into an increasingly elaborate, physical and entertaining game, where the atmospheric set isn’t just a backdrop for the game but something you interact with and pass through. It also becomes more linear, which might be frustrating for bigger teams but suited us well.
It struck me as a game with a satisfying quantity of content to get through. Our slow start probably contributed to that impression, but it shouldn’t leave you feeling short-changed.
I’d quibble a little with the ending – a late game search task felt like an interruption of the flow, and the conclusion seemed designed to end in a jolt of adrenaline more than a sense of satisfaction. But those were small things that didn’t spoil the sense of a solid piece of superhero escapism. Anyone with mobility issues might want to check that this experience will work for them; otherwise this should be a safe bet for a game that compares well for size and sophistication to most of the others available in Porto. 
