LOCATION: Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, Canada
Photo above is property of Sauve Qui Peut
Photos above are property of ESCAPETHEROOMers
📝 ETR DECODER
🔑 GAME: Vortex Future
📅 DATE PLAYED: September 14, 2023
🎬 GENRE: Fantasy
🧠 DIFFICULTY (Based on 2 Players): 7/10
👥 TOTAL # OF PLAYERS: 2-8 PPL
🕒 LENGTH OF TIME: 60 Mins.
💰 PRICE: CAD $30/PP
☎️ BOOKING TYPE: Private
🔓 ESCAPED/ COMPLETED?: YES
📖 THE STORY
The Vortex has launched you into the future - 2089 to be precise - into a highly technical and complicated space station, which is currently malfunctioning! The station is critical to protecting the planet but only has 1 hour of energy reserves left. Can you get all systems back online and restore power to stabilize the station and save Earth?
🎯 HIT THE BULLSEYE
At first glance, the room appears simple and straightforward. But the devil is in the details! What appear to be simple, identical tasks are actually quite varied in the type of thinking and information processing required to solve them.
Just as Vortex passe was immersively ancient, this room is undeniably and exclusively future-forward, in every way!
We completed this room as a duo, but the nature of the first part of the experience makes it equally well suited for a larger group of players. Most rooms seem best for either small or large groups, but this experience truly accommodates all sizes, particularly early on. (The end section might be less well-suited to large groups.)
This room had no locks and required no searching. Initially, it seemed impossible to imagine how there could be multiple puzzles requiring different thinking styles in the stripped down design. However, each puzzle is tightly designed in a tidy package, so take heart! The answer is probably right there in front of you. There's nothing hidden, obscure, or otherwise 'tricky' - just you and some knobs and your brains.
🧩 MISSED THE MARK
While the lack of locks and searching usually leads to very creative design, the puzzles in this room all shared a common method of entering the answer. The mechanics required to obtain the answer were refreshingly different from puzzle to puzzle, but it would have been nice to see a bit more variety in the actual mechanism once you had the solution to a puzzle.
Because of the stripped down nature of the puzzles, we can imagine it would be easy to get stuck and have no clue where to turn. If that happens, switch to a different puzzle (or trade with another stuck member of your team!) Looking high and low won't help, everything you need is right in front of you.
🏹 TAKE A SHOT?
Although this ranks as one of the most difficult rooms at SQP, we found it to be quite a smooth and enjoyable experience, as it fit our puzzling style quite well. We wouldn't recommend it for first timers or high energy groups/families given the lack of searching and extra materials, or those who prefer narrative-heavy games. But if you're looking for a pure puzzling challenge and are ready to test your brain against a variety of devious tests, this is the room for you!
🔎 HINT
Don’t take anything for granted. While instructions are minimal, each word is purposefully chosen.
ℹ️ ADDITIONAL INFO
Paid parking is available on the street immediately in front of the building. There is also a free public parking lot a couple blocks from the facility itself. Signage for Sauve Qui Peut is very clear, and there are a couple of restaurants and shops on the same block of this cute street. They have good-sized lockers and restrooms available in an otherwise sparsely decorated waiting area. All rooms can be done as French or English versions; however, the intro stories are only available in French. Our GM gave us short summaries of each room in English. You can have up to three hints to still be considered an official win; you can still ask for more beyond that.
Photos above are property of ESCAPETHEROOMers
(If you do decide to try this game, give us a shoutout or tag us on social media so we know you heard it from "ESCAPETHEROOMers"!)
Disclosure: We thank Sauve Qui Peut for comping our tickets for this game. Although complimentary admission was generously provided, it does not impact our opinion on the review whatsoever.
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