LevelUp Escapes: Mission: Abducted

We found this a difficult room to escape out of partly due to some  game flaws and partly due to our own stupidity! 

Some really clever puzzles within this game especially in the second half where the game opens up into a more non-linear feast. Particularly impressed by a beefy logic puzzle! This room was let down by its age and the sheer difficulty in hearing each other in the opening sections. 

After doing two of LevelUp’s other games and just loving them, we decided to come back the next day to do this one. Unfortunately it was significantly less good for two main reasons.

Firstly, broken tech. Moving puzzle pieces that wouldn’t stay in place and kept falling out. A magnet lock that popped open without us having completed the required trigger to open it. A light that was supposed to come on but didn’t. One of the initial paired starting cells was missing a step stool making it difficult to look at/interact with things at ceiling level; again, when we asked why, we were told it was broken.

Secondly, hosting issues. There are loads of puzzles and lots to do for a team of 2 people. More than once we were both working on puzzles and a hint would come through for a totally different puzzle that we hadn’t got to yet. This not only breaks the immersion and the train of thought, but also spoils the fun of the puzzles still to come! I get that the host is probably working off some time-based cues to decide when to give these hints, but to be honest unless we were literally stuck and wandering around lost, I’d rather just be allowed to crack on with it, even if that meant we risked not completing in time. 

Ok, first off I know I’ve given this game a lower score, but I want to explain why. I really wanted to enjoy Mission: Abducted, but it just didn’t deliver the experience we were hoping for.

*Spoiler warning*

The game starts with a split beginning in very low lighting, where one player has to figure out how to restore the lights. You also can’t hear each other until you’ve completed a certain task, which made the start quite frustrating, being separated in the dark without communication wasn’t a fun or engaging way to begin.

During the game, a few puzzles didn’t seem to work properly. We solved one only to be told that it can sometimes give the wrong answer, which was disappointing. There were also a lot of sorting and maths-based puzzles, which made the flow feel a bit slow and repetitive at times.

We had actually planned to book another game straight after this one, but decided not to after finishing Mission: Abducted, as we didn’t feel confident about what the other rooms might be like. It’s a shame, because the concept and theme have potential but unfortunately, the execution and puzzle design let it down for us.

However, this room unfortunately had me annoyed from the very beginning. The rooms are intentionally dark to begin with, which is fine. But this meant that I was feeling around, poking and prodding everything to work out what we should be doing. Until i came across something sticky... Luckily we brightened the room up pretty quickly, only for me to discover that the sticky feeling was wet paint. Bright green, wet paint. The colour had come off the top of one of the puzzle elements and instead of just letting us work out what the missing colour was (which would have been easy enough), they covered it in wet paint. I got very lucky that i didn't wipe it all over myself and had a tissue on hand to clean up a bit (as there are no toilets in the venue, only the shopping centre, which would have taken time away from the room).

Moving on from that sticky situation.... there was a really great balance between the 2 starting zones, meaning there was lots of back and forth between the mini-teams and not too much waiting around for the others. We were out of there pretty quickly and reunited to find LOTS more puzzles to complete.

The main bulk of the room is almost entirely non-linear, so we were in our element with the divide and conquer approach. There is a great variety of puzzles in here and a mixture of combination locks, keys and maglocks.

We managed to skip a few steps in here and soon realised that we needed to go back and complete everything. You will need to do everything, so there is a lot to do.

This is where we encountered issue number 2. There is a puzzle where we found a solution which perfectly met the criteria and it didn't work. We got stuck here for quite a while trying different solutions, coming up with multiple different solutions and nothing working, until finally one did. We asked the GM at the end of the game why the other solutions didn't work and she couldn't give us a reason. The reasoning she gave for the correct solution, also matched the first answer we gave but it didn't work. They clearly haven't accounted for there being any other solutions, which there are. So this was rather annoying.

Getting into the last room felt a bit janky and I wasn't sure we were even doing it right, as it was quite a stretch at times and felt like we were taking shortcuts, but apparently, it was correct. All of which was done whilst being blasted with really loud music so we couldn't hear each other very well. 

Overall, it was fun, and the puzzles were good, but much like the first room we did, it needs fine-tuning and some better thought putting into certain elements.

Edit...

LevelUp have since been in touch and provided a detailed explanation on the solution to the puzzle I mentioned. Their reasoning does now make sense, however, it certainly didn't at the time. Maybe it just didn't click for our team, but personally, I would just swap it out for a clearer puzzle.