Mission Escape: Maioc Crisis

One of the poorer rooms I've played with a few areas for improvement, although it wasn't all bad.

Positives first: Staff were friendly, reasonable pricing compared to other escape rooms, we enjoyed ourselves, decent theming.

Now the negatives:

- The story was literally read to us from a sheet of paper - this immediately screams poor quality. It was an interesting narrative for the room and could have been well executed if it was delivered in a more exciting and engaging manner.

- Most of the puzzles involve finding a code and inputting into a computer which lacks imagination.

- Many of the puzzles required guesswork and randomly trying numbers in different orders, this is poor design.

- Set design felt lackluster. Lighting was poor and we couldn't see the puzzles and numbers a lot of the time.

- There was nothing to write on in the room, which didn't help when there are a couple of maths puzzles.

- Hints were poorly given. The host basically gave us the answer after we struggled for a bit, instead of prompting us with suggestions of what to try. This takes the fun out of the puzzles.

- Game flow is poor. There are not actually many puzzles in the room and they have to be done one at a time, so half the team was often left doing nothing.

Overall, the room worked and we had fun, but it felt janky and lazily put together. Instead of discussing which bits of the room were awesome and made us think like we often do with other rooms, we found ourselves slating the puzzle design, being annoyed at having to guess codes and having the host give us answers instead of hints. The theme and story is unique and has potential, just the puzzles need to be more imaginative and interesting to raise the quality of the room. 2/5