This is a tough one. I though the first half of "One Wing Airlines" was great but was let down by the second half, I thought "Into the Reliquary" looked fantastic with some genuinely clever moments so I had been looking forward to playing Shamleys.
The game looks great and carries on the same level of build quality and attention to detail that we had enjoyed in the previous games, the story was also intriguing and there's a clever start that was a nice touch.
The opening phase of the game is a fairly typical search and assessment of the environment, it was the main puzzle in that first area that probably derailed us. With the theming of a toy shop there are some puzzles based on famour toys/games and (I'm trying to be as spoiler lite as possible) whilst they may have looked good on paper, I don't think they worked as a puzzle as the answers were open to varied interpretation. This would be our problem in the second room with a similar setup. We failed to escape and from what I've been told we were just over halfway through. I also hadn't appreciated the fact that with it not having full height walls we could hear the team next door in Reliquary (they were stuck on a puzzle, we were fairly sure we knew which one and nearly offered assistance). By the end, I had endured enough and wanted it to be over.
I think the game looks great and has some genuinely clever potential, I've played similar games with similar themes and ideas but with a much better puzzle execution.
Hints were delivered by a pocket thermal printer that whilst very effective (and I am looking to buy one for a project) wasn't overly in keeping with the theming.
What really irked though was at the end the GM (who was excellent, she was absolutely brilliant and hinted us well but it still wasn't enough) told us that we had got about as far as they expect teams to get and that if we could get a discount if we rebooked for another attempt.
We won't be rebooking.
I have no problem with failing to escape a game, it happens, but this was just not a good experience, but the thing is, it really could be..
Dark Master is seemingly gaining a reputation and not one it probably wants.
