The Escape Artist - A Wonderfool Dream Review

DISCLAIMER: This post is spoiler-free. Any spoilers will be clearly demarcated and be in WHITE text. There are no answers given about how to solve any of the puzzles, just general hints, which the gamemasters may also give to you anyway when you play. If you want an entirely spoiler-free experience, just don't read the review/tips!

Brief Intro: If you have played any online room escape games, you would surely be keen on The Escape Artist, a real-life room escape game at the somewhat obscure Bukit Timah Shopping Centre. They have 4 rooms in total, which you can check out on their official website here. The room sizes allow anywhere from 2 - 8 people, depending on the particular room. Each room has a unique theme and a set of puzzles which you have to solve to unlock the door to get out of the room. The success rates are pretty low, probably below 50%, so be prepared for a challenge.
It costs $15 per person for 50 minutes (and an additional $15 for the entire room for a 10(?) minute extension), $12 if you are a student. Pretty reasonable rates for a really great time!

Many puzzles in every room are what I call 'general lateral thinking puzzles', where you have to think creatively and figure out how to derive the code from whatever clues you have.

This blog post will be my review of one of their rooms, A Wonderfool Dream (Version 2)



A Wonderfool Dream (Version 2)

Theme: It is a garden themed room, with carpet grass, a picnic table, and various other props to give it the feel of a garden/alice in wonderland kind of aura.

Puzzles to expect: General lateral thinking puzzles, numeric equation, logical reasoning, hands-on puzzle block assembling

Difficulty Level: 5/5 (only because of one thing, apart from that probably 3/5)

Review + Tips:

--SPOILER ALERT: contains some description of exactly what puzzles there are)--

There are two strands of puzzles, one to solve Box 1 and then Box 2, the other to unlock Box A and then Box B, after which the two strands converge.

I really didn't like the big wooden block puzzle. It is too tedious to solve and as a first step (you need to solve it to unlock Box A) it is unnecessarily difficult and not fun to work on at all. It's not hard to figure what you need to do, but actually doing it is the tedious and difficult part. I hope the gamemasters change or remove this puzzle from the room, it spoils an overall interesting and fun room.

Don't spend too much time turning everything upside down. This room is pretty straightforward in terms of clues' location - probably just need a minute or two to obtain every clue you need and start working on them.

More generally, just remember that you are, most of the time (otherwise it's 3 digits), solving for 4 digits to unlock the next lock, so have that in mind when looking for what a possible answer could be.

My favourite puzzles in this room were the maze puzzle and the ending 'grid' puzzle. Last one was pretty creative and had good 'final puzzle' impact. 

--END OF SPOILER ZONE--