Sofia, Apr 2024
Two of the three rooms at Infinity Escape have a magic school theme, and we dived straight in with the second and more recent of those; which has a story inspired by the second book in a certain series of novels. When booking this room you have the option of selecting an unusual add-on, a 15 minute ‘Mystic Wands’ extra experience, and we played with that included.
This turned out to be an immersive theatre interlude, partway through the escape room though with the timer paused, based around purchasing a set of wands. This fitted into the game in much the way an interval fits into a theatre performance, though with more humour and less queuing at the bar; we returned to what we were doing with a feeling of, “right, where were we?” – but also having been thoroughly entertained.
The room itself is visually very impressive, with the game’s opening being the first in a series of cool effects. Some of these are not even puzzles but simply part of the decor, to build the world and as pure eye candy – along the lines of a theme park recreation of a movie world.
I’d describe the puzzles as starting off fine and improving, with a couple in particular later on that I found clever and original. There could perhaps be more of them. Each of the various sections tends to have only two or three things to solve, and although the game didn’t feel overly short to me, that was mainly thanks to it having included the 15 minute extra experience.
The ending was cool and themed and slick, though I thought there’s an opportunity there to make it more tense and dramatic – some of the effect was lost because we could stand around and complete what we needed to do patiently and calmly.
This would be a really great room for families, or beginners who have a thing for the theme. Enthusiasts will likely find it among the most visually impressive games of this genre they’ve seen, while being a bit on the short or easy side. But even if you’re out in under forty minutes, there’s a lot to enjoy along the way. 
