Escape Barcelona: KONG Protocol

Hype is a dangerous thing, so it's important to note that some of our team didn't love this game as much as I did, mainly because of the loud volume of background noise/music, but this is my favourite game that we played in a week long escape tour of Barcelona, and may well be my favourite in the world of around 300+ games played.

It's epic and large and beautiful and technically outstanding. The story is central and feeds the puzzles in a way that makes every single one diegetic and important. It does lean on high tech inputs; buttons, screens and wires, but that's definitely my vibe, and has enough physical aspects to not feel like all you're doing is tapping on things. There are live characters and a more fearful team may find this pushes the limits of what they're comfortable with, but the 'rules' of these encounters are clearly and cleverly spelled out so that you always know what to do to 'survive' and that should allow anyone to get through it. There is an epic finale, and one moment in particular where I just couldn't believe it could be in an escape room, and right when I thought I'd found a tiny disappointment with the game, it stepped up and did exactly what I hoped it would do; ensuring no-one missed out on what looked like a one shot event. Multiple endings depending on performance and choices you make throughout wrap the game up in a lovely little bow, only slightly marred by an ending video that didn't seem to be of the same quality as the physical production.

I have told people that I recommend this game so much that I'd fly over to Barcelona just for this, but I'm aware it's worth remembering that an escape room experience is subjective, and my experience differed from a colour blind member of our team,  who kept feeling like they had to shift off the puzzle they were about to do as they realised colours were important. No game is perfect, even down to the imperfections of the performance of the team playing it, but I left this saying that I might as well stop playing Escape Rooms now, because I couldn't imagine how anything could live up to this.