Escape Rooms Ennis – Beach Bar
Location: Ireland
Game Date: 23/02/2021
Game Type: Online Avatar Led
Team: Amy, Ian, Gord & Liz
Duration: 60 minutes
Theme:
“You have finally been offered the job of your dreams, and you celebrate by taking the ultimate tropical holiday before you begin your new job. But on the last night of your vacation, you celebrate a little bit TOO much, and you have lost your passport somewhere at the beach bar. You have one hour to find your passport or you will miss your return flight and loose your new job!”
I felt there was a slight change of story as we did seem to helping our avatar find her passport, and we were on a zoom call to help her after her ranging bender the night before. This is a good change for online and we still felt “part of the story”.
Decorated very well, this room was quite immersive and had a quality finish. You could feel the love that had been poured into this room and it’s clear the owners would have had a lot of fun designing and creating it.
Beach Bar looked very, very true to its name! Beachy, like a holiday (remember them?) bar with all the decoration you’d expect to find, which created a cute, charming and whimsical set.
Sound was used well, with appropirate songs playing, which got stuck in our heads the whole game (and afterwards!)
The online game makes good use of audio/visual to deliver the story at the start of the game, this was a nice touch.
A lovingly handcrafted room that is unique in theme, and had bags of personality!
Game Play:
A Game that I’m sure in real life would be more open, but due to the constraints of the avatar felt more linear (There was opportunity of open stuff in a different order, but we couldn’t branch off and solve things more individually) The mix of puzzles was excellent, with searching, word, observation, teamwork, codebreaking and physical puzzles.
The puzzles all tied in very well to the beachy feel of the room, and they all felt very intrinsic to the room, as if they were coming from the room itself rather than just being layerd on top of a pretty set.
The ah-ha moments were wonderful,and came at just the right moments (and one that came later in the game that was most welcomed and a really nice touch)
Logic behind all the puzzles was absoloutely sound, and the only times we were scrathcing out heads was when we didn’t have everything we needed to solve the puzzle in question. This was really nicely done by Escape Rooms Ennis as it really got our brains working and encouraged us to think outside the box and try loads of different things, whilst never feeling frustrated.
The use of telescape as an inventory system worked well, and whilst it was most supplementary, it was used to excellent effect in one puzzle to give us the feel of doing a fairly physical puzzle ourselves. This was a very nice touch!
The flow of the room was good, with us moving fairly seamlessly and smoothly from puzzle to puzzle, our only true slow-down was down to our own overcomplicating than a flaw in the room.
Signposting was good, with subtle hints around the room, but not too much that you felt spoon fed. There was still a good sense of independent gameplay and discovery in the room.
Overall, Beach Bar is a lovely room which translates well to online play!
Clue System:
Clues were subtly delivered by Sarah, our Avatar.
Game Host:
Sarah was our game host and avatar and she did a great job, friendly courteous and more than willing to take direction round the room, and giving us ample time to try all of our crazy ideas and she really ran without thought processes without being intrusive to our gameplay.
Did we escape?
Did we escape?
Yes, in around 45 minutes
Website:
Price:
2 Players €50.00
3-6 Players €75.00
Brit of an Escape Habit 