Hong Kong, Nov 2024
Of all the ‘archaeology’ themed rooms I’ve placed, I’d never before seen one based on ancient Cambodia, so that alone was a reason to book into this game. And while there was plenty of choice of room, there was much less choice of company – Lost seems rather dominant across Hong Kong, with half a dozen addresses in the one city. The branch we picked is fairly central on the Kowloon mainland side so was easy to reach by metro.
Our host handed us a sheet of paper with game rules on one side and a story on the other, and in we went. This is a room that manages to evoke its setting in a cool way, particularly in the opening, while being quite simple and stripped back in other ways. It’s not immersive, in the sense that it’s never going to make you believe you’re in a jungle, but gives a good impression nonetheless.
Khmer Empire had Lost’s highest difficulty rating, so it was a bit disappointing to find that we’d completed it in twenty minutes. It didn’t even feel like we’d been playing unusually quickly either, having faffed about a bit with two of the puzzles. But there were only seven steps to the game in total, and most of them we found quick to solve.
Our host was attentive enough, but the venue gave an impersonal impression of getting teams in, through, and out. If there had been more to do I’d have been happy enough with it; a small problem with ambiguous use of colour aside, the puzzles made sense and used some nice effects. But it just felt too brief, without even the compensatory thrill of feeling that we’d outdone ourselves. On the plus side, we found we had more time than expected to explore Hong Kong. 
