The Escaporium: The Haligonian

Haligonian is the adjective for a person or thing from Halifax, and this room is a love letter to the town where The Escaporium is based. There’s a storyline beyond that, involving searching a collector’s private museum, but it seems like an excuse to celebrate all things Halifax. That might sound like an odd premise, less exciting than stopping a bomb or escaping from jail, but the result is not just a game that feels distinctive but one where you can feel the pride in the town’s history and achievements.

The Haligonian is also the company’s original game, and it did feel like an older creation, one which focuses on taking a room and filling it with puzzles. It’s not quite true that everything you can see is part of a puzzle, since there’s some extra memorabilia purely for theming, but it’s not far off.

There was one puzzle near the end that outstayed its welcome, being process-based and somewhat repetitive, but more importantly because only one or two of us could tackle it at once, turning it into a bottleneck. That was the exception. Here and in The Escaporium’s other games, there’s a consistent high standard of design where you rapidly learn to trust that if a puzzle doesn’t make sense it’s because you don’t yet have everything you need for it, or have misunderstood it in some way.

While I would recommend the company’s other games ahead of this one, there’s plenty to recommend it, particularly if you’re in the mood for a no-nonsense hour of solving puzzles and opening locks. You might even emerge having learned a little about the town you’re in along the way.