Aurum

There are countries where most and/or the best escape rooms are centralized in capital cities like Prague, Budapest or Athens and other countries with a high degree of decentralization. Germany and the Netherlands are perfect examples of the latter. This has advantages and disadvantages. For the travelling enthusiast wanting to visit the capital city and for instance combine escaping with other activities (sorry Heiner, there is people that do that) this results in a limited offer. Both Berlin and Amsterdam have excellent rooms, several very good rooms and then the quality tends to decline rapidly, as a matter of fact, I have played two of my worst rooms ever in Amsterdam and Berlin, so most of the times people ask for recommendation in these cities, one ends up naming the usual suspects, which have been the same for several years now.

Luckily, in both cities we have had recent openings (Miraculum in Berlin and The Alchemist in Amsterdam) that have put the cities again under the radar and gives an extra motivation to visit for those, who still have not played the games from The Room in Berlin or Amsterdam Catacombs, for instance. These new openings made it into Terpeca’s finalists last year, but in Amsterdam there was another opening that went largely unnoticed, namely Aurum.

It is fair to say that Aurum is of course not a room that can compete with the big names, but it was quite a pleasant surprise in one of our last trips and someone wanting to play exclusively in Amsterdam might consider it adding the game to their list.

Aurum was a little bit of a different game, which used almost no language or instructions, and getting to understand what needs to be done has a bit of a trial-and-error component until it clicks. When it does, everything is straight forward, although at certain moments a little bit repetitive. If it does not, there is the risk of frustration.

These tasks are made using a particular piece of technology, which guarantees involvement of all players and lot of team work and which gives the game quite original dynamics. Sometimes the ambiance lacked a bit of polishing, but there were also nice props in connection with said technology.

Overall, it was a game in which we went with not so high expectations and it ended up being original and fun.