Escape The Room

I am not French, but if I were I would probably say 'je deteste les jeux de escape the room', or something similar. According to wikipedia, MOTAS was the inspiration for this type of game, which I would take issue with slightly, because I would class single-room games such as Crimson Room and Viridian Room to be different from MOTAS and its many imitators.

For a start, single-room games seem invariably to consist of the same pieces of furniture, the same wastepaper bins concealing torn pieces of paper with partial codes on them, and the same type of puzzles. The early versions of these games, such as Crimson Room were challenging and innovative, but the slew of games ever since which have basically taken the formula and reproduced it almost exactly are unwelcome.

Partially it's an excuse for people to create games with no plot-line or characterisation. Once we have escaped the room, after some pixel-hunting no doubt, we are seldom any the wiser as to why we were there in the first place, and in case we have no idea who we are. Perhaps we are a bad person who deserved to be trapped in the room in perpetuity.

In fairness, some games have tried to introduce some variation and themes into the mire, by plagiarising movies for example. These themed-games provide a welcome relief from the monotony of the genre, but you still have to wade through a lot of crap to find them. Which is what DD is here for ;-)

However, the best type of escape games, in this author's humble opinion, are the ones where you have more than one room to escape, and where you're escaping (and have been trapped) for a reason. Even if that reason is that you have offended a non-specific spook.

Anyway, enough about this. The next game review will be a corker.