Omescape: Narrative & Puzzles
I’ve been to many escape rooms since middle school, but I never really liked them. Most of the time, I can be 100% committed and focused for the first ten minutes and then, especially when there are more players or the tasks are not very engaging, my level of excitement dies down very quickly. Therefore, when I visited Omescape in San Jose for the second time last Thursday, I was pleasantly surprised and impressed by how their Kingdom of Cats room completely changed my opinion about escape rooms.
Kingdom of Cats don’t have a great story — this might be the only thing I didn’t like about it. Having played Omescape’s Jokers’ Asylum, I was expecting a clearer goal of the story. Even though the short video we watched before entering the room laid out a rough plot, I wasn’t convinced by the “challenge the kind” mission and didn’t feel motivated to start the game. It might be the fact the designer made it too explicit and introduced a brand new idea that it felt artificial — if it is a plot most players already heard of (e.g. Joker) or a self-explanatory theme (hospital, graveyard), it would be a lot more compelling.
Despite of the initial disappointment, I was immediately attracted by its smart game mechanisms. In the first room, people who never played escape rooms were initially confused by what may contain clues and what may be distractions. However, the first room is both straightforward and contains strategies that are useful for other rooms, so it quickly introduced everyone to how escape rooms work. Later on, in every room, we started with looking for puzzle(s) to solve, clue(s) we can find, and the exit (sometimes hidden in the room). Since it was a small group, we automatically divide up the work and start solving. We tried to use hints from the escape room owner only when we really cannot solve it.
The puzzles are challenging but make a lot of sense too. In my previous escape room experience, the worst moment is when I find a puzzle that I failed to solve to be a completely random guess. What’s unique about Kingdom of Cats is its clever usage of different media, including smell, magnets, and visual illusions. By letting players find clues from different rooms at the same time also encourages team collaboration and communication. Therefore, I think the puzzles enhanced the narrative a lot.
The only thing I would suggest to change is the instruction cards. Though it’s necessary to remind players of the story, it often feels long and boring to read when players are in a hurry to finish all tasks. It would be better if the cards are concise (fewer words, more graphics) and contain as much useful information as possible.
Overall, playing Kingdom of Cats made me feel the fun of fantasy, challenge, and discovery. It feels like a combination of IR (the narrative) and board game (exploring a physical space), with lots of teamwork involved.
