Lost Spectacles

The only peril in this one is being caught by your superiors while stealing a barrel of beer, but a lot of the puzzles are unique, hand crafted and really quite intricate when you look back on them. It's nicely period and the hosting was, as usual, top notch with someone obviously rooting for us to get finished in the time and it was incredibly close - well couldn't get much closer really!

We really liked the way the puzzles are integrated more into the theme of the room, some escape rooms are a little more padlock heavy than this one but although there are padlocks and keys, these are integrated well into the game and aren't too obtrusive.

One of the puzzles had a little wear and tear on it's printing and could have done with a bit of a refresh (circuit diagram), but on the whole this is definitely up in the list of favourites. 

Very nicely hosted game with game host entering in the spirit of Joseph Wendle giving a perfect prompt or two when it was needed (but knowing when to stay quiet and watch us nicely struggle). 

Quite a padlock heavy game, but not to the extent that you go "another bl&&dy padlock", so it's ok, but maybe the odd extra electrical lock wouldn't go amiss if it needed a bit of a refresh.

For convicts who come after us - you might want to think about the fact that there's no clock in the cell, so maybe the sense of urgency isn't there initially and perhaps it should be. 

Good fun.

A nicely produced game box with high quality items within it and the ability to be reset to regift to others. Possibly a little expensive for more experienced individuals as it didn't stretch us too much with only one of the puzzles causing some scratching of heads. 

Definitely one for families, as the game itself adds a ludo like distraction to the puzzle while you're figuring out the haunting storyline. 

As other reviewers have noted, this is a high production value box set and I really like the ability to order a reset pack to ensure that the items that you may have scribbled over or folded (or screwed up and jumped on in frustration) can be reused and the whole kit isn't just a single use object. Puzzles were on the whole well structured and because I personally don't like heavy reliance on website interaction to resolve board game puzzle tasks, I didn't find the interaction too intrusive. 

Not so much creepy as an eerie feel to the story, but nicely atmospheric.  Expensive, but understandably so and a very good feel to the whole package.

This worked very well. A very (very) minor quibble about the responsivity of the clock, but aside from that this is a well thought out and sensibly themed set of puzzles that is family friendly with a coherent theme.

Played extremely well with three people and all of the items identified made sense. We all came away with the sense that we'd all solved some of the puzzles and we put our heads together and solved some of them at the right level.

As members of the team find items they go into a communal inventory and can be used immediately so it's worth keeping an eye on the inventory to find out what's been added and cut scenes jumped in to show you what had been opened/what happened which is more helpful than some of the live escape rooms we've played.

This played fine - although darker on a windows screen (even at maximum brightness) than on a mac which meant that one of us was at a disadvantage as there were quite a lot of dark details that required at least some visibility.

Some pixel hunting that was challenging on laptops, but other than that, the game played well and had no bugs. All the puzzles were fair, themed and tied together well and the hints were targeted to the correct stage in the game as you would expect. 

Hasn't put us off playing others by the group, but would probably go for less "atmospheric" (deliberately dark) storylines.

As a temporal agent searching for clues to another agent's location, you're thrown into a classic locked door puzzle which is a nice route in to a reasonably lengthy game. One of us had an initial issue with the tech and needed to download firefox to get it working more but likely a user issue than the game. 

Two small bugs while playing but nothing a refresh of the browser didn't correct and the puzzles were varied enough to keep our interest. With multiple locations/users it's still essentially playing as one user's game - so locks will remain firmly shut even if another team member has resolved them - hence you might as well be playing alone, it's only really the zoom/skype/phone link that keeps you connected. That said, it can be quite useful as one of us had to leave pre end of game and came back and finished it later alone. It can also be frustrating to come into a room to find all of your companions have already opened all of the locks leaving completed puzzles (!) - so it's one of those "to note" comments rather than a complaint. 

There are cleverer 'multi-player' experiences out there, but it played well, was fair, didn't require any hints and was a good for the price. Hasnt put us off playing the other game.

This was definitely not for us.

The heavy dependence on Facebook/instagram/fake phone response delays did little to disguise that this was a few well designed set pieces stitched loosely together with a story that had little depth.

One of us did not have all the social media platforms required, so while playing remotely they were essentially excluded from the “fun” of analysing pictures. (Yes, we could have shared screens, but we had lost patience with the format, the game and each other by that point). Progress is difficult to track when you pick up the game later, but you can largely ignore that as you can direct to the various websites.

We ended up doing it when we were in the same location mostly solving it independently and only the last section had any level of entertainment for two players.

If you like multi application, single player focus puzzles, it’s fine for the price, there are some nice touches, but make sure all players in all locations have facebook, instagram and likely screen sharing.

An over 10 minute delay on starting with no explanation in that time made us a little edgy and reduced our rating on this game as we were needing to get out for a later appointment. However, that said…

It’s a good game with a wide range and high volume of puzzles that are themed well and props that work well where they are intended to :). There are some (what we would call) red herrings in this game, certainly there are items that are unused.

Hosting (by Cameron) was good and nudges were clear and timely highlighting good attention to detail and just enough to let us call it a successful escape. 

If there was a slight quibble it would be that there were 2 or 3 similar 4 or 5 digit padlocks so on occasion there’s a level of trial and error but it’s possible that it might be our non linear solving of the puzzles.

On the whole positive except for the late start for us. 

Maybe a trigger warning for bug phobics would be good here, but as mild phobics ourselves it wasn’t too tricky to deal with that section.

There was an item/construct that we hadn’t seen before which was nice, but it was a variation on a theme.

Nudges were timely and gentle enough just to put you back on track which highlighted the excellent and attentive hosting.

We wouldn’t automatically recommend this for a beginner level room for 2, but maybe if there were a mix of experience then that would be fine.

The large number and wide puzzle range go from observational to skill in both low and high tech which would allow a wider range of experienced players to join in.

Definitely a positive, value for money experience, but challenging!