29-30 Morley St, Swindon SN1 1SG
£13.00
Languages: EN, DE
180 mins
Oldervik Online is a series of escape room-style games, set in our Professor Dunstan universe, that you can play from the comfort of your own home.
The adventure continues on the rails but you’re not the only agent onboard! A classic whodunnit…
Overall rating
based on ratings from 4 users
combined with 3 pro reviews
Your review
Player reviews
Very well put together escape room and mystery where the story is immersive, puzzles are tough and lies are plenty. Well recommended as an online game for 3-4 people, works wel via Zoom too and some profit is going towards charities. Make sure to budget a good 3 hours 🙂
"Operative Onboard" - the second game in Co-Decode's Oldervik series - takes all the elements that made Ch.1 an already enjoyable game, and improves on them in every way.
The narrative in this chapter takes on a classic "whodunnit" style, with story and puzzles themed around a selection of suspects on a train. Players are given just enough information about the characters to feel interesting, but not so much to be overwhelmed by text and unnecessary backstory - in fact, the entire game is a beautiful example of elegant design - absolutely every detail is there for a reason, and they fit together beautifully, nothing extra and nothing missing.
Players use two sheets of A4 printed paper as a "game board" containing QR codes representing the locations that can be visited, passengers to be interviewed, and objects to be examined, all of which lead to corresponding puzzles on a website. This makes the entire games feel like an Escape room/Cluedo/Poirot crossover, and it works brilliantly.
Mechanically, the designers have taken feedback from the first game - QR codes are larger and easier to cut out and scan, and we had no tech issues at all - the entire experience felt very high-quality. Which, considering it only cost £12 (of which £2 goes to an NHS hospice) and provided over 3hrs entertainment for 4 people makes this a "must-buy" game.
Reviews by escape room review sites
Co-Decode's previous game A Jewel In Jeopardy was one of the strongest offerings of the early wave of digital games, and Operative Onboard picks up where that left off, both in narrative and in play style. As a description, 'digital' is only partially accurate for a game that combines printed paper materials with web-based resources; like its predecessor, it makes extensive use of QR codes to jump between the two.
In this game you're on a train to the destination you identified at the end of th...
