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🎮 Game Site (Alternate) | 🏢 Company Site (Alternate) | 🗺️ Based In Warsaw, Marsovia, Poland
From Company: ⏲️ 60 Minutes | 💪 Hard | 🔢 2-5 Players (Private Booking) | BOOK NOW!
THE PREMISE
You were chosen as a deputy of well-known archeology professor from Princeton University, who had to leave the country in some urgent private business. You have a mystery to solve, which is related to a golden figurine from a temple located deep in a tropical jungle. Investigate the professor’s office, and you will find many clues. For an hour you and your friends will become scholars from Princeton University. Will you solve a complex mystery?
THE REVIEW
The Mystery Of Mayan Temple ▪ Mysterious Room
"The Mystery Of Mayan Temple" is the first in a series of avatar-led remote escape rooms released by Poland's Mysterious Room, with more offerings to come soon. A live, in-person version utilizing the same space is also available for play locally.
"Mayan" borrows heavily elements from the Indiana Jones movie series, with the central narrative putting you in the shoes of Dr Jones: Inspect the university office of the well-known archeology professor, and with his notes he left behind, along with his cherished souvenirs from past adventures, you must gain entry to the fabled Mayan Temple deep in the jungle. You have the will, now you just need to figure out how.
To be honest, any game with an exploration theme often wins people over. Mix in the likes of Indy Jones, you start off with a good first impression easily--and that's exactly how I headed into the room--albeit remotely through Zoom.
Though the room looked fantastically decorated even at first glance, what got our attention primarily was Mysterious's style of camerawork. While most companies would have the avatar play as the customers' hands and broadcast the live feed via a hand or body-mounted camera at the same time, these combined duties were split in this game: There's a distinct cameraman for filming, and a separate, fully costumed (nice touch) avatar as our game proxy.
This brought distinct advantages, for one, we had a perfect view of what's going on, both wide shots and close-up shots, from start to finish. And two, the avatar, now completely detached from any equipment, was free to walk on-screen when prompted, and sneaked off-screen conveniently when needed to perform behind-the-scene, technical cues. Her operation was smooth and evaded our detection for the entire game!
The Mystery Of Mayan Temple ▪ Mysterious Room
Next, back to the set, which was once again, fantastic through and through. The office space might be small, but there's no shortage of marvelous sight. The amazing art production team quite literally worked its magic from ground up to the ceiling. There was a huge and beautiful floor tile pattern, complementing a matching one on the wooden desk. A large world map spanned across a side wall, finally leading up a a ceiling fan with ornate blades that hid secrets of their own.
Perhaps the most impressive set piece were the translucent windows that gave a peek to the brightly sun-lit scenery of the outside streets--except, of course, they're nothing but ingenious trickery! Truly, truly impressive.
We would spend the majority of our allotted time in this office space, trying to solve our way through 4 parallel paths of puzzles, denoted by alchemy's main elements. This non-linear game play features similar solutions in the end, but the journey to collect them all resulted in quite a roster of different puzzles to solve; they differ in topics and formats, though all unified by overarching themes of travel and adventure.
The perfect blend of tech reveal and classic gen-1 style clues made for a genuinely interesting and entertaining session of unlocking padlocks. There were some very ingenious examples of hiding numbers and letters for lock combo solutions. Some instances include: word associations, special jigsaw pieces, and my personal favorite, hidden messages passed off as art. Though not terribly difficult, the puzzles elicited quite the rush when the answers dawned on us with big "ah-has!"
There was one particular puzzle that couldn't be reset if the players were to manipulate this prop the wrong way, and while I wasn't a fan of this situation, it wasn't a true issue for remote play, since the avatar had absolute control and would actively prevent any irreversible wrong moves--but still, an improvement can be made.
The Mystery Of Mayan Temple ▪ Mysterious Room
As the game neared towards the latter part of our adventure, we would be wondrously transported to the titular temple (not a true spoiler now, is it?) and that's when the game switched gear drastically. While the production value remained top-notched, this half of the game was surprisingly light on mental puzzles, relying almost exclusively on physical tasks.
Action-based tasks often mean things that I would rather do on-site than to watch from home, and this was the case as I watched enviously at my avatar through Zoom. With only a handful of objectives to complete in the jungle, we only got to witness the Mayan temple for all but ~10 minutes, and unanimously agreed this wonderful set was criminally underused.
If there's any sort of "complaint", it'd be the owners' curious selling short of themselves, unable to realize the full potential of the beautiful resources they've constructed. If only there were a few more puzzles embedded in the later scenes, these 4 temp-archeologists (featuring Bluefish & Curiosities) would bring back more than the target figurine back to the uni.
And by that, I mean even bigger grins of satisfaction on our already smiling faces. All in all, great school trip! 😃
THE DECISION
Is this right for me? Consider this game if...
➲ You are a fan of the Indiana Jones franchise. This game is based in that universe, and he makes a cameo.
➲ You previously had fun with games covering similar themes of archeology or exploration, such as The Lost Temple.
➲ You appreciate custom-made, unique set and props that demonstrate impressive attention to details.
➲ You enjoy a solidly structured, non-linear but parallel paths approach to puzzle design, featuring the 4 elements.
➲ You have at least 3 parties to split the cost, making this a huge bargain of a remote escape experience!
Ok, how many teammates should I round up?
💪 On company's site, difficulty is officially listed as hard. 🧐 ...However, based on my team of 4, it subjectively felt like 5/10.
🔢 Based on the above, I would recommend a team of 3 to 4, experience dependent.
All right, let's do it! What should I do next?
🛒 Book your game right here. (PLEASE GIVE EscapeMattster.com A SHOUTOUT 🗣️ FOR BEING HELPFUL!)
➲ For remote experience, please note potential time/date difference between your location and the host's.
➲ Be sure to have all specifications installed prior to game. For details, check right here.
➲ For this game, live feed requires Zoom. There is currently no separate inventory featured.
Signing off,
ESCAPE MATTSTER
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