Shrewsbury, Mar 2024
LevelUp are inside a shopping centre, and since they were kind enough to open early to accommodate our schedule, that meant we had a slightly surreal entry through a closed and deserted mall. That would have made a very appropriate start to a zombie theme, but Mission Abducted has a sci-fi story: you’ve been abducted by aliens and need to escape from their spaceship.
This is a split start room, which of course means that if you have a team of fewer than four then at least one person will be solving on their own for the initial stretch.
The largest part of Mission Abducted uses an open structure, with a mass of puzzles and lots of opportunity to split up and tackle things in parallel. That’s another reason that makes this game well suited for a larger team, though it ought to be fine for a pair who are happy to split up and work efficiently.
The hosting was good; I liked the clean spaceship decoration style; I thought the puzzles were solid; and I enjoyed the adrenaline rush of the mid-game puzzle frenzy. And it brought things to a clear and satisfying finish. 