Bruum Escape – The search for the magical artifact

Bruum Escape – The search for the magical artifact
Location:  Italy, but we played the remote version!
Game Date:  12/06/2020
Team: Amy, Gordon, Liz, Charlie & James

Once again, the wonderful Gordon from review the room invited us (well, just Amy was avaiable tonight) to play with him, Liz and Charlie & James to conquor “The Search for the magical artifact” – a game set in a caravan in Italy, I guess this could be considered my first foray into Europea games (well, on the continent… you know what I mean!)

Theme:
The premise of the game was that Mr X had been cursed by a fortune teller who he refused to pay, we needed to help him break into the fortune teller’s caravan and retrive the artifact that had bestowed an evil curse upon him.

The game started with a zoom call to Mr X, who explained that he had his informant Mike who was going to keep tabs on the caravan whilst we went inside and helped “Mr X” once inside the caravan, I was in love with the set decoration, all the way through the game I was lamenting about the fact that it’s highly unlikely that I will get the chance to play this room in person. It was SO pretty, with excellent decoration, I could sense the quality in the build through the lense of the camera. Dark, moody and a little bit spooky, the atmosphere was set and continued coherantly through the game.
The use of space looked fantastic, for a really small space every inch, nook and cranny was used to its full extent.

The camera work was clear, focused and we didn’t have an connectivity troubles. The interaction with Mr X was worked well into the game and story.

Game Play:
An open game, where again driven by the “avatar” became quite linear du to its constraints. The puzzles were wide ranging, from logic, word, searching, to teamwork, reveals and out of the box thinking. (including something we NEVER thought I’d see in an escape room!!)
Puzzles were mostly clear in their logic, with there being a couple that took us a while to get to the logic but they all fell into place in the end. There was little ambiguity in the puzzles, I think any we cause was of our own doing, had we been in the room we wouldn’t have made those simple mistakes!
The ah-ha moments were excellent, and some of them were type that make you think…. HOW did I not spot that earlier!
The flow was good, for the most parts, there were some slowdowns were we seemed to come to a halt, but that was soon followed up by a flurry of activity when one of the pieces slotted into place
Signposting was ok, there could have been a bit more cohesion in some parts of the game, but again this could have been due to the restrictive nature of the camera.
A lovely, lovey game that I really wish I could have played “in the flesh”. Gorgeous.

Clue System:
Clues, I think would have just been subtle nudges from Mr X. We didn’t have any out and out clues.

Did we escape?
Yes, in 55 minutes!

Website: https://bruumescape.simplybook.it/v2/
Price:
2 Connections €30
3 Connections €40
4 Connections €50