The Body Shop - ONEWAYOUT Sydney
Today's entry marks a change on this blog - from now on, I will no longer limit myself to reviewing items you can put in your mouth, I will be broadening the scope of this blog - starting with ONEWAYOUT Sydney, one of the newer escape rooms which seem to be popping up all over town.
If you're not familiar with the concept of escape rooms, they are puzzle-solving entertainment which you undertake in groups. The backstories differ from room to room, but the basic concept remains the same: you and your friends are trapped in one (or a series of) locked room, and you must use your noggins and keen powers of observation to find clues around the room, solve puzzles, and hopefully make it out of the room before the clock ticks over and whatever fictional fate of horror befalls you.
Context: ONEWAYOUT is my first experience of an escape room, and I must say I enjoyed it immensely. The context of The Body Shop is that you and your friends are trapped inside a global organ harvesting operation, and you are given 60 minutes to escape. 60 minutes is pretty standard across most escape rooms, though some can be as short as 40 minutes and others 70.
Location: Suite 2/57 Denison Street, Camperdown. Located quite closely to the University of Sydney and easily accessible by public transport, driving is also a good option because there are quite a few street-side parking as well as 2 dedicated car spaces for ONEWAYOUT patrons. As the outfit shares its space with several other offices / businesses, the actual entrance itself can be a bit tricky to find - remember, go to the back of the building and look for the single green door.
Game Design: most of the puzzles are quite well-designed, and they weren't clunky at all. The game flowed quite naturally, the puzzled made logical sense.
Level of Difficulty: suitable for beginners. The three of us made it out of the room with 15 minutes to spare, without requiring any clues. Having said that, the puzzles weren't easy per se, we still had a very enjoyable experience, and it was a good introduction to escape room.
Pros:
Find out more at: http://www.onewayout.com.au/#0
If you're not familiar with the concept of escape rooms, they are puzzle-solving entertainment which you undertake in groups. The backstories differ from room to room, but the basic concept remains the same: you and your friends are trapped in one (or a series of) locked room, and you must use your noggins and keen powers of observation to find clues around the room, solve puzzles, and hopefully make it out of the room before the clock ticks over and whatever fictional fate of horror befalls you.
Context: ONEWAYOUT is my first experience of an escape room, and I must say I enjoyed it immensely. The context of The Body Shop is that you and your friends are trapped inside a global organ harvesting operation, and you are given 60 minutes to escape. 60 minutes is pretty standard across most escape rooms, though some can be as short as 40 minutes and others 70.
Location: Suite 2/57 Denison Street, Camperdown. Located quite closely to the University of Sydney and easily accessible by public transport, driving is also a good option because there are quite a few street-side parking as well as 2 dedicated car spaces for ONEWAYOUT patrons. As the outfit shares its space with several other offices / businesses, the actual entrance itself can be a bit tricky to find - remember, go to the back of the building and look for the single green door.
Game Design: most of the puzzles are quite well-designed, and they weren't clunky at all. The game flowed quite naturally, the puzzled made logical sense.
Level of Difficulty: suitable for beginners. The three of us made it out of the room with 15 minutes to spare, without requiring any clues. Having said that, the puzzles weren't easy per se, we still had a very enjoyable experience, and it was a good introduction to escape room.
Pros:
- Good game design, logical puzzles. This might be thought of as a given, but I have read many reviews where the puzzles were tenuous or barely made any grammatical sense. The puzzles in this room are simple, yet creative.
- Friendly, dedicated game-master. He was so, so lovely. I have read about some escape rooms not having dedicated game masters. Our game master was letting us out and stopping the clock the moment we solved the final puzzle, which means that he must have been watching our progress attentively throughout the ordeal.
- Ease of transport and parking, secure safe to keep your belongings, and an emergency exist button (the small things do count)!
- Reasonable pricing (between $20 - $30pp for weekdays depending on the number of persons in one team; and between $30- $40 pp for weekends)
- 100% satisfaction money back guarantee. Normally I regard these as mere puffery, but our game master particularly made this clear to us before we entered the room, and he seemed very sincere about it. This shows the pride he has in his room.
- Our friendly game master seemed a little shy and non-theatrical. If he had told us the body harvesting story, dressed in character as, for example, a mad scientist as he took us into the room, or perhaps played a small clip explaining our predicament, if would help us immerse more fully into the experience.
- This isn't really the game master's fault, but some previous groups have been wrecking a bit of a havoc - took one walkie talkie home so that players had to text the game master if clues were needed (we didn't have to so this didn't affect us, but it might be annoying for groups who actually want clues); one group wrote the answers down in the room so that the game master had to tape some paper over the bench and warn us not to look. I just can't believe some people can be so rude and destructive - our group were careful to replace props after we used them and offered to clean up - isn't that the normal, decent thing to do?!
- The neighbours were a little noisy and at some points we were confused whether their children's screaming formed part of our clues or not. Turns out, not.
Find out more at: http://www.onewayout.com.au/#0
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