Games in Chandler's Ford by Genius Escapes
Most recent ratings & reviews from players
We were excited at the idea of having a difficulty level determining which manual you get during the room. However, it felt very disjointed. We did Advanced difficulty, which is apparently for people who've done more than 5 escape rooms. Even though we've done more than 50 rooms, we didn't want to do the Genius level as there was just two of us.
The manual was confusing and complicated, and left us looking for 'a thing that looks like what the manual says', rather than actually feeling like we were solving puzzles.
We weren't given many hints (which is stated in the description of the difficulty levels), but then in the final 2 minutes we were given so many hints that we couldn't do anything with them.
Our ratings:
Theming: 6.5/10
Puzzles: 7/10
GM: 7/10
Value: 7/10
Fun: 6/10
Overall: 67%
When booking this game you're asked what difficulty level you want to play at: Standard, Advanced or Genius. Usually this manifests itself in some arbitrary clue limit but not so here. Instead it dictates which 'manual' you want to take into the game with you. Genius mode is only recommended if you've done "50+ escape rooms". Having passed this milestone some 700 games ago we decided to give it a go.
Normally I strongly dislike any sort of manual/journal/instruction book in a game. Being told where the puzzles are loses a lot of the discovery aspect. But pleasingly the Genius manual only has two pages, and really you should only look at one of them; which explains which answer goes into which lock based on a series of icons. Ignoring the rest of the hand-holding (which we were told is more and more explicit depending on which manual you take), what you get is a more challenging than average room, which isn't afraid to chain steps and tasks together before giving up a final answer. This, combined with some nice looking and well implemented tech, made for a very enjoyable experience, particularly suited to the more experienced player.
