Sherlock Maze 2

Athens is known as the escape room paradise for horror lovers. Out of the 17 Terpeca Greek winners from last year only 4 were not horror. Having played a very large numberof games in Athens, I find also that Athens is also a paradise for puzzle lovers and everyone that has played and enjoyed the PP games would agree with me on that.

Players who have been around for many years now and have seen a development of the industry towards the overall experience and impressive set design, sometimes in detriment of puzzle quantity and/or quality will find in Athens a great deal of “old school” puzzling, that will be the delight of those who miss the search, observation and brain cells squeezing of the initial escape rooms.

I cannot really say how many times we stated during the trip “Hey, this is a clever/nice puzzle” and how satisfying is the “aha feeling” when it hits. The fact that puzzle rooms are longer provides also the necessary time frame needed for this.

Out of the puzzle rooms played, my favorite of this trip was Sherlock Maze 2. One of the reasons for this was the fact that while the focus of the room is the puzzling, this was done in a carefully presented set with a very nice use of sound and lights, contrary to puzzle rooms, which are plainer in comparison, such as other more first-generation rooms of the company.

There was a subtle but clear guidance in the room related to the puzzles that needed to be solved and within an overall linear progression there are several instances in which parallel solving was possible.

As it happens sometimes in more puzzle focused rooms the story did not play a huge role, but rather provided the underlying arch for the whole game. The puzzles were nicely connected to this topic.

Overall, it was a very satisfying game, which should be included by groups that vehemently dislike horror, as well as those enjoying puzzling.