Lock Academy: Revolt At Lock Academy

Each room at Lock Academy is different and distinctive, but after playing a few of them you start to recognise a house style to the puzzles and the game structure. I’m not going to give away the plot, but Revolt starts off with the (fictional) founder of Lock Academy behaving suspiciously out of character, and escalates from there into the sort of big twist that the company revels in.

As with some of their other rooms, there are distinct stages to this experience and the decor is deceptively low-key to start with, though the early game also had perhaps my favourite sequence of the whole game.

On reflection, if Revolt has a weakness it’s that a bit too much of the puzzle content consists of following instructions. That’s true of specific sections of the game, not the whole thing, and your mileage may vary; we had plenty of fun playing these sequences at the time, they just lack the a-ha moment fizz of other puzzle types.

But there were several very smart and satisfying a-ha moments in the pivotal section of the game, which used the storyline as the basis for some very original and clever puzzle ideas that involves the kind of out of the box inspiration that I associate with the best kind of computer-based adventure games.

Add in the slick, high tech set design and the efficient and friendly hosting, and Revolt would be top game in most cities. At Lock Academy it’s arguably not even the strongest at the company, and Paris the competition is particularly fierce; there are other options that will be more memorable for the jaded enthusiast. But I’ve never had a bad time in a Lock Academy game, and you won’t go wrong with including Revolt on your schedule, on its own or as part of a binge of the venue’s rooms.