Live Cam Escape: Frankenstein’s Laboratory

The name might sound like a new operator sprung up in the time of lockdown, but Live Cam Escape is an alias for Polish escape venue Let Me Out, based in various locations in Poland (plus Brussels), and their avatar games are pre-existing rooms, though so far they’ve only made the ones in Lublin available over livestream. The theme of this one is exactly as the name suggests: a laboratory theme where the goal is to assemble the Monster and bring him to life.

For a brief moment at the start of the game it looked like it might be a disaster: our video stream was unpleasantly blocky and low quality, making it hard to make out details. Fortunately our host was attentive to the problem, and made a few adjustments to improve the signal, successfully improving picture quality to something quite reasonable, and we had no further problems with it.

Unusually this game has two hosts: the avatar and a separate cameraman. That was a superior setup, reducing camera shake and giving them much more flexibility in positioning the camera angle. I feel they weren’t taking full advantage of that though – since the avatar was fully in view throughout the game, it was a missed opportunity to have him portray a character who was part of the narrative, rather than just our remote proxy.

This was a game that felt fairly low tech, and yet did in fact use plenty of technology. That impression was probably because the electronics were often used in quite straightforward, non-thematic ways, to give a padlock code or something equivalent. But it’s done with colour and charm.

I found this a rather easy, linear game. Part of that was that the hosts tended to lead us in subtle ways now and again, but also the puzzles are mostly fairly straightforward. I might rate it a little lower for that, but it seems to be intended for beginners and family groups, which means it’s fair enough that it has a low-ish challenge level.

What it does have is a nice flow, plus various moments that were cool or amusing. As long as you’re expecting a simpler game, it’s logical and enjoyable.