Norwich, Jul 2024
This is the third game I’ve played at Cryptic, and the third one that’s left me with mixed feelings – much that’s impressive, but also several things that leave me not entirely sold on the room.
This is a robbery game, in which you have to break into a vault owned by a mafia boss, with the unusual twist that you won’t be stealing cash, you’ll be making digital transfers once you reach the control panel from which to do so.
Another unusual twist in this room is that it uses augmented reality. This takes the form of a tablet with which you can scan certain things, then interact with a digitally enhanced version of that thing on the screen. This is a cool piece of technology, and could be a nice wow moment for many players. Even so, it was my least favourite part of the game. It felt like it had been tacked onto the game, a feature that introduced digital mini games whose appeal was solely in the novelty of the tech, and the thrill of that novelty quickly wore off. With any more than two players it’s a gameplay bottleneck, and one we were relieved to get past.
The game build is impressive enough without the AR. It progresses through a sequence of different areas, each well presented with a clear sense of progression as you move towards your goal. I liked the realism of many of the tasks, particularly early on, although one of the most satisfying steps involved something that at least fifty briefings at other companies have explicitly told me not to do, which players really should not be taught to try.
This isn’t an easy game, partly because there’s plenty to do, including some trickier steps. The difficulty is increased by anti-signposting – by which I mean, for example, providing a set of digits that could plausibly provide a code for the lock that you’re trying to open, but which are actually for something else. That’s not a grievous design flaw, but it encourages teams to spend time trying things that seem reasonable but aren’t going to work, adding small frustrations. It would be easy enough to just withhold one digit until the point where they can be used.
That’s a very minor thing, but was one of a number of what felt to me like rough edges, not in the aesthetics of the room but in the puzzle flow. As it is it’s still the strongest of the three Cryptic rooms I’ve done (the others being Greenbeard and Magic School). Reduce the time spent fiddling with the AR tech and it would be stronger still. It looks good, an immersive set that involves some creative and interesting tasks, and I’d like to recommend it a lot more warmly – but if you asked me whether to play it, I’d struggle to predict whether you’d find it rewarding or frustrating – mostly likely a bit of both. 
