Lucardo Manchester: University of Magic: The Entrance Exam

I feel that this room has either changed or been over reviewed in the past as I picked this room due to the good reviews and it certainly didn't live up to it. We have done over 150 rooms now but this had puzzles that just didn't really make sense and some that fell flat. I did get really frustrated with one puzzle which they had to guide us through in the end and could have been us having a bad day but we wasted so much time on it. Most of the room looked fine but the main puzzle towards the end the props really let it down. I unfortunately cant recommend this for enthusiasts.  A good team that didn't have the same problem as us would also go through this quite fast as there didn't seem to be as many puzzles as most rooms.

Couple of nice puzzles. Flowed nicely too. 

A nicely themed room with a good variety of puzzles, including a few I hadn’t seen before.

I did enjoy this game and although we didn't escape,  we had a fun day. 

Our host on this day was truly awful and clearly didn't care or watch the game. We received the same clue 15 times on the final puzzle... Recently the staff seemed to have slipped.  

Fun to play with children and great theming.

Played with a friend and her two little ones - and they seemed really to enjoy the game more than us! As an overdoneone theme, we'd love Lucados take on the magic theme. 

Nice fun room. Family friendly. 

Beautiful set.

Runs alongside the magic room at the other venue. It's nice that the 2 stories run back to back

It was pretty good, looked great. Bit of broken tech at the end that takes away from the story.

#5

Fantastic quality of puzzles ands set decoration. A very original room,  attention to detail was great and it was loads of fun! The best room out of all of Lucardo’s that we’ve done. Still hovering around our top 10 after 40 rooms.

Quite fun and magical feeling, and impressed with the props! Slight downside that I feel like some of the puzzles weren't so challenging and leaned slightly too much towards the looking around for things

Really good room by Lucardo. We were hoping to complete this room since we did Dragon's Heart back in 2018.

It really didn't disappoint but we were left a bit lost by the story, we didn't know what the aim of the room was, not sure if we missed it in the introduction video (which had very low volume) so once all the padlocks and doors were opened, we lost a bit of time trying to understand why we were meant to do.

The game master (Emma, I believe) was fantastic. She really is enthusiastic about escape rooms so it made our experience even better as she knew to wait before sending us clues.

A great set and some interesting well-themed puzzles.  The game was let down a bit by the last puzzle though, which was lacking proper constraints and required you to make assumptions which didn't fit with the story.

Sorcery on a Sunday!

I came here for my final (at least for now) Lucardo challenge with a few friends.

Story

Secure your place at the University of Magic by finding a wand and mixing a potion.

Puzzles

There were some truly unique, ‘magical’ tasks closely related to the theme/story. We required two or three hints, but none of them were overly complicated. The previous group had written the answer to the penultimate puzzle down, and this wasn’t rubbed off prior to us going in. While we still effectively solved it, the information we shouldn’t have had made it obvious we were doing it correctly. Since the answer didn’t become accessible until right near the end, it wasn’t too big a deal.

Mise-en-scène

A quirky, close-packed room that utilised every inch of available space for brooms, wands, quills, creatures and potions. I identified a fair few of Poundland’s Halloween wares as props, but if you don’t know, some of them do look authentic. There was one item that struck me as impressively Harry Potter-esque, but not quite as interactive as it perhaps should have been. As a whole, the room did feel part of an immersive, wizarding world.

Final Comments

An impersonal brief was saved by another bouncy Game Operator who welcomed us into the room in-character. I wouldn’t take more than 4 people, or else you’ll be struggling for puzzles to solve.

Great room, our favourite of the 3 we played there. Very well themed and some great puzzles. Recommended if in the area. 

This was a fun room that is beautiful. It has great theme and the GM was fun! No telescape, so I enjoyed that also. A pixie fairie provides the camera view!

Wonderfully  charismatic and engaging host/avatar, and great use of the camera pixie to give you a great view of everything. Its a great room to start with, but the addition of the two characters of Prof Rick and Emzie the camera wielding pixie really elevates this adventure as your drawn even further into the narrative. The absence of an inventory is alos really refreshing as you're not diverted from the action. 
A few adaptation to the IRL puzzles actually make gameplay better (in my opinion) as the puzzle that can cause so much frustration (and in my case borderline rage quit!) has been modified and is no longer a time sink.
This is a wonderful family game, and a cracker of a game for introducing new players to the world of online escape rooms. Go play, iits so much fun!