Game Over – Forbidden Temple of Montezuma.
Location: Derby
Game Date 16/05/2017.
Team: Amy & Ian
Theme:
“It’s been many years since your archaeology professor vanished while on an expedition. You decide it’s time to follow his trail, bring his research to light, and fulfil a promise. It will be dangerous. Something claimed the professor, it could claim you too.”
The decoration was very nice, cleverly done and immersive, a lot of effort has been put into the room in terms of decoration, it was clean and not cluttered with high production values.
The use of tech was a nice touch but wasn’t too overpowering, things did seem to happen as if by magic!
A lovely environment to spend an hour, with everything being suitable within the theme of the room
Game Play:
A linear game. Most of the puzzles were purely logical, codebreaking type of puzzles, with a little bit of musicality thrown in.
Game Over is an international brand and this can be seen in the puzzles as all of them could have been played in ANY language.
I felt quite frustrated at some points throughout this room as several large logic leaps were required, especially towards the end of the game (almost as if they deliberately lull you into a false sense of security of OK puzzles and then throw 2 or 3 REALLY illogical puzzles into the mix to trip you up at the last hurdle)
There were a couple of puzzles I did enjoy, one with multiple parts which all came together nicely. A few puzzles we had the mechanics to solve but we missed a part which the room wouldn’t let us progress if we didn’t do…. whilst a good fail-safe to make sure teams see and do everything, this was also incredibly frustrating.
This room is billed as Game Over’s hardest game, and whilst not the hardest room we’ve done… getting over some of the logic leaps in the room was quite tricky.
I would recommend experienced teams taking a team of 3 or 4 and I honestly wouldn’t recommend this room to Newbies, I think its logic leaps are too out there for a first time player.
Clue System:
Clues were delivered via 2 ways, one on a touch-screen in the room where you could request them yourself and second via a touch button where a game host could give you more detailed or direct clues via an intercom in the room.
Game Host:
Unfortunately I didn’t not catch our game host’s names. There were 2 hosts working and they seemed to split the workload of the 4 rooms between them, There were point where they were paying attention to our game (when we got an unasked for clue, which was great) and they both were friendly. I do feel that by not having a dedicated host, the experience feels a bit more sterile and less personable…
Did we escape?
Yes, in 56 minutes… getting us a onto the leader board (Which I think means they’ve only ever had 3 escapes from the room we did!)
Website: http://www.escapegameover.co.uk
Price:
2 Players £42
3 Players £60
4 Players £72
5 Players £85
6 Players £90
Brit of an Escape Habit 
Hi guys this is Ryan branch manager of game over in Derby. Firstly I would like to thank you for playing game over the Montezuma room. We do pride ourselves in our decoration and have tried to make the rooms and themes as realistic as possible. So thank you for noticing the effort we put into the decoration of the rooms. I would like to respond to your points you have raised in your review.
1. Firstly in our Derby site Montezuma is our most difficult room so it is bound to have a few difficult puzzles. We do not lull you into a false sense of security, a good escape room is to have a mix of difficult and not so difficult puzzles which gives it a good balance. That is exactly what we have achieved with all our rooms. To have a room with too many difficult puzzles or too many easy puzzles is not appropriate for players.
2. We design our rooms so that the players see and do everything required to succeed and to escape. An escape room is considered flawed if you can skip puzzles and still manage to escape. You found it frustrating but hey your’e in an escape room. The whole point is for you to be trapped in a room, find clues, solve puzzles and escape. The point is not to breeze through the puzzles and skip over puzzles when you cannot solve them.
3. Yes it would be ideal to have one host per one game…but let’s be realistic shall we, it’s a business. It would not be financially viable to have one host per game.Our staff are more than capable of running 2 games per host.
We hope this addresses your concerns
Kind Regards
Ryan
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Hi Ryan, thanks for taking the time to put your points across.
With regard to
point 1. We understand that this is your hardest room, I feel that the room was hard in its lack of logic, this is just my point of view however, as someone else could come along and “get” the puzzles instantly. I stand by my review and that I felt the room to really be increasing in logic leaps up to the last puzzle.
However, we are experienced players, so maybe that’s why we found some of the earlier puzzles a bit easier (creating the feeling of it ramping up towards the end)
Point 2. I found it frustrating as the logic leap for the last puzzle was TOO much, it wasn’t the fact that we had to do everything that was frustrating (and I enjoy doing everything, that’s why we play as a 2) I feel players should NEVER feel frustrated in escape rooms! Bamboozled, perplexed, stumped… but never frustrated, as with frustration soon after comes anger and then people loose interest in the game.
Point 3. Yes, your staff yesterday were doing a great job running 4 games between them and they both were very friendly, but with approx 90% of the games I have played (104/114) – they have all had a dedicated game host PER GAME. Only 10 games across 3 brands have a game master running more than one room… This allows for better clue delivery, and a more personal experience for each team. Having the same person brief, run the room and debrief/photo makes for a much richer experience. This is the industry norm in my experience both in the UK and America.
With all that being said, I did enjoy Temple of Montezuma and will look forward to trying the other rooms your have to offer.
If you wish to contact me directly to discuss anything further with regards to specific moments or puzzles in the game (as I do not wish to post intricate details on here) please feel free to do so via britofanescapehabit@hotmail.com
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Hi, I understand your points however I do disagree, hence my initial comments. Everybody has a different tipping point to becoming “frustrated”. As escape room owners and creators it is difficult to gauge this correctly, you perhaps became frustrated quicker than a lot of others who have played in our rooms. I personally feel that our rooms have the perfect balance of difficult and not so difficult puzzles. You call it logic leaps and frustration….I call it Escape Room :). However we shall ask for feedback from every customer and if everybody feels the way you do then we will take the necessary steps to make it easier.
We look forward to seeing you again and playing our other rooms.
Kind Regards
Ryan
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Hello, we feel as escape room owners and game creators everybody has a different “tipping point” to frustration. It is difficult to gauge, we believe we have the right balance of difficult puzzles and not so difficult puzzles. You call it frustration and logic leaps….we call it Escape Room. However we will ask customer for their feedback and if everybody feels the same then we will take the necessary steps. We look forward to seeing you escape our other rooms
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wow nice blog..
its really interesting..
You can also enjoy this mystery game at Live Escape Game København at Denmark.
Me and my family always like to enjoy this live escape room.
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