São Paulo, Dec 2023
Before anything else I have to give props to our host, who threw himself into his pirate character with unmatched energy, stomping and leering his way through his intro with gusto.
Escape Hotel is one of São Paulo’s larger companies, and all the games are available in English (and some for remote avatar play). They’re also considered one of the more advanced companies for set design and technical effects, though that was less visible in this room than in the other one we played here. What that amounted to here was some nicely atmospheric pirate island decor, with a couple of more dramatic moments. The hint system was cutely on-theme too, though that also meant it was limited to a selection of pre-recorded messages.
I thought the puzzles were weaker than the presentation, though to be fair on the game most of them were fine and it was only two or three of them that were dubious – one unnecessarily ambiguous, and another that looked solvable some time before it was, and felt very arbitrary even once it could be solved. The more frustrating thing was weak flow, where it often gave us things that looked like we could do something with them when we couldn’t, or conversely expected us to solve something using an obviously incomplete set of clues. So we spent a lot of the game metaphorically bouncing off brick walls.
There are plenty of games to choose from at the venue, and the good points of this one (mainly nice decor and energetic hosting) seem likely to be shared by the others too, so I’d suggest picking a different one ahead of it. But I guess this could be a reasonable choice if you’re looking for a more challenging room, even if the difficulty comes more from uneven design than difficult puzzles. 
