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Review: Chronos - Escapologic, Leicester

Room Story - from Escapologic

A version of the normally dormant Chronos virus has mutated, becoming deadly, resulting in the death of any living thing it comes into contact with. This pandemic has decimated the human populace and plunged modern society into chaos. After several failed attempts at finding a cure it is now time to activate the last resort.

show more.... The Powers That Govern, a mysterious secret society, have enlisted you to pilot a machine developed from the collective research of some of the most brilliant minds in history; Da Vinci, Tesla and Einstein. This machine is the final contingency, it will shift you through the voids of space and time… Your destination, Victorian London.

It is here that you will find patient zero, the only known fatality caused by Chronos up until it’s mutation in the present day. The research from this rare case was once lost to time but now you have the power to get it back and find a cure. Change the past, fix the present and give humanity a future.

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Key Stats

Room NameChronos
VenueEscapologic
LocationLeicester, UK
Date2018/04/15
Escape Time47:00
Team Size3
My Recommended Team Size3 - 4

Review

After successfully completing Reactorvate, we moved on to our next game of the day: Chronos. We were a little wary about how successful we were going to be in this game as we’d heard it was quite a challenging one from a few others who have played it. We were given a typical Escapologic humorous introduction to the room and our simple objective was to head back in time and retrieve a virus sample.

The game starts where any good game set back in time should start: inside a time machine. The time machine instantly gave us an impression of what to expect from the room. The theming was excellent and we loved the old fashioned Victorian styling. After a few simple puzzles and some clever effects, our time machine whisked us back in time.

We found ourselves in a Victorian style laboratory with lots of potions, copper pipes and various implements to explore. There’s a little bit of searching, but the majority of the room is presented to you on entry. As we found a few things, our aim became clear and we started work on one of the most interesting puzzles in the room involving lots of pipe and water – I’ll say no more, but it was good fun.

There’s a “part” of the room that’s reused in every puzzle, but used slightly differently in every puzzle. Typically in a room, you learn what something is for and how to use it so that you can repeat it later on in the game. In this game, you had to rethink your previous approach when reusing this “part”. This is where we lost the majority of our time, and I can imagine it getting quite frustrating for some teams as it isn’t immediately obvious what you have to do.

My only real criticism of this game is that there isn’t much of a surprise factor. The majority of the action takes place in a single room and pretty much what you see within the game is what you’re going to interact with in the game.

After we completed lots of puzzles, we were awarded with our sample of the Chronos virus and quickly made our way back to the time machine to return to the present day.

This is a good game with excellent and interesting theming and some good physical puzzles to interact with. It’s a game that requires quite a bit of logic and a bit of repetition of similar types of puzzles so it isn’t going to suit everybody. We enjoyed ourselves and chalked up another successful escape.

The team were Beth, Daniel and Becky.

Ratings


Overall A very well themed room with a steampunk feel filled with levers, dials, pipes and physical puzzles.
Difficulty It’s not an easy one. Certain parts of the room are reused throughout the game in different ways, meaning you can’t always rely on what you’ve learnt so far.
Fun We had fun, we felt the room gave us a real challenge. We really enjoyed the theming of the room.
Puzzles There are some really cleverly interwoven puzzles in this room. These all build towards a single central puzzle.
Immersion It’s a really nicely themed room, I loved the Victorian steampunk feel and the time machine to get there was very well done.
Surprises It’s not a room big on surprises, there aren’t any big moments in the game or much onward discovery.