Team Exit: Spy at the President’s

Billed as Team Exit’s harder game, it started and ended strongly, but had weak points through the middle. The briefing (pay attention!) instructs you to deactivate the lasers in the room, which give a very impressive atmospheric start; similarly the “escape” at the end has been done before but is still good fun when done right.

The room itself required a lot of searching; we were only two players, so we needed pointing in the direction of two separate items that a larger team might well have found. The searching for this was fun, but principally for this reason I would suggest that it’s best played with groups of 3 or more.

All but one of the puzzles were fairly standard; however a few of the puzzles were fundamentally flawed in their execution:

• There was an obvious puzzle in the centre of the room. However the clue to it was ambiguous at best (they had tried to clarify a bit but even after we got it, I wasn’t happy we’d had enough clarity / direction); we considered over 10 reasonable solutions to it before striking the correct one.
• An electronical puzzle was setup for good teamwork, but had an over-sensitive configuration (we have seen a very similar puzzle done right in another room in Warsaw); it also didn’t have anything to do with the theme.
• By contrast, the second puzzle in the diamond room was original and very much on theme; however even after being shown how to do it, I’m not convinced it was reasonably achievable by someone who didn’t have the luxury of time.

The room construction was reasonable, although the reveal of the diamond was frustratingly slow. Possibly they did this for atmosphere, but there’s a difference between drama and tedium. I also felt the use of laminated clues, which generally I frown upon except as a measure of last resort, could easily have been avoided.

Overall the room is enjoyable but mostly hard for the wrong reasons. Worth doing if you’re around, but Warsaw has better rooms to try first.