Busan, Oct 2024
There are a quite a few escape companies in downtown Busan, but finding a game that doesn’t need any Korean language knowledge seemed more tricky; Game of Minds was one of the few options that had clear English support. Of their rooms, we excluded the ones that looked like they might be intended as scare themes or for kids, and went with the one that was left.
This was a stop-start game for us, where we tore through parts of it at speed then got entirely stuck in other places. It’s easy to decide that all the puzzles we solved were fair and well designed while the ones we struggled with were flawed and confusing, but I do think there’s a degree of truth to that here. For example, the first step we got stuck on was a clever idea but had such subtle signposting that I’m impressed with any teams who manage to make the intuitive leap without hints. It would work better if there weren’t a dozen other things to look at at the same time, most of which seem much more promising things to focus on.
Although there are some locks, most of the puzzles here use hidden sensors and other ‘magic’ mechanisms, which respond to quite a variety of types of input. The mostly linear puzzle sequence generally follows the Renaissance theme, and although the decor isn’t spectacular it’s a decent sized space that evokes a kind of faded pseudo-Italian atmosphere.
I thoroughly enjoyed most of the game. The exceptions weren’t egregious, they were just tenuous in a way that better signposting would help with, and small tweaks to e.g. remove plausible alternative solutions. My tolerance for these was reduced somewhat by the feeling that we were often unobserved, with a limited allowance of hints and an often absent host – such as when I wanted to check before taking an irreversible action that might have spoiled a particular puzzle.
As a result I’d describe Da Vinci as, well, fine – decent entertainment, room for improvement. More engaged hosting and some fine tuning of the puzzles would go a long way. 
