Sofia, Apr 2024
Funky Monkey’s first game Rebellion was in fact designed by Codex in Bucharest – which is a point in its favour, based on the visit I made to that company some years back. In it you’re infiltrating a secret society so as to unmask the members of the inner cabal, though this is set in a future dystopia where the conspiracy rules the world. That allows Rebellion to blend the sort of decor you might expect from a Masonic lodge with grungy futuristic theming, a combination that worked surprisingly well.
One puzzle seemed to me quite open to multiple interpretations, if not outright overthinking – in that we worked through quite a few permutations of a couple of wrong interpretations, before finally admitting defeat and taking a clue. Your mind might jump in the right direction; if not it may be a frustrating part of the room, as it was for us.
In other respects the puzzles were a strong point for this room, though in a couple of places less dim lighting would have made things go more smoothly. Predictably my favourite moment was a more physical task, but there’s plenty of variety to appeal to all tastes.
We finished with only three minutes left, and while that’s partly because we lost lots of time on the aforementioned puzzle, there was also plenty to get through. It boasts a succession of scenes each with its own decor style and some nice effects and use of technology. I wouldn’t call it story-driven as such, but it conveys its theme with flair; it should be a fairly safe inclusion for a schedule of Sofia escape rooms. 
