Pirate Cave

Downtown Budapest is packed with escape rooms; even with the most intense schedule you could play games for a week without needing to leave the centre. So it’s pretty impressive that Pirate Cave has survived and thrived for close to a decade despite being several metro stops out to the east.

The venue is deep within an industrial park, and has just the one eponymous game. It immediately gave me a good impression thanks to the owner, who was solicitous and clearly passionate about his room. I suspect that the most popular of the downtown venues get a lot of tourists and stag/hen dos, whereas the location of Pirate Cave means they get a higher proportion of enthusiasts.

I suspect this game gained its reputation with help from one feature in particular, which must have seemed very special when the room first opened and is still cool enough to be noteworthy. But it’s also just a very solid game. There’s not all that much narrative beyond ‘escape the cave’, but it didn’t particularly need it; the pirate theming is pervasive and enthusiastic and holds together well. Puzzle design was consistent, interesting and logical.

This is one of those games where I trimmed my rating back to a stingier value after giving it a little time and careful comparison to how I’ve rated other games in the past. Pirate Cave has been around a long time; putting it up against some of the really impressive rooms I’ve played from the last couple of years, there’s a limit to how much I can hype it, it being old fashioned in a variety of ways. But it’s also Good Old Fashioned Fun. It’s energetic, cheerful, has one or two memorably cool elements, and excellent hosting. Of the games available in Budapest, I wouldn’t hesitate about encouraging you to include it in your schedule.