The Asylum

It was a long drive or so are supposed to start all the reviews related to this room. Silent Town is located in the far North of the country. To put into perspective from my home in the Netherlands it is closer Brussels than the location of this room. The drive as such was not that bad, but we started our trip with a considerable delay, as one of our teammates got the full “Brexit Experience” at the airport in Schiphol (beware visitors from UK when planning first games after arrival!) in addition to all planes arriving late due to weather conditions. Fortunately, our game was the last of the day and the team was so kind to wait for us in spite of the delay.

Based on the description on the website and our first impression when entering the location there was some reminiscence of a game like Stay in the Dark, albeit in a much smaller scale. That impression however did not last long, as the games are quite different and Asylum is definitely more puzzley than Stay in the Dark, although the focus is clearly on the horror experience.

Without entering into definitions there are almost no real horror rooms in the Netherlands and with the closure of Stay in the Dark it can be said that this game is currently the scariest room in the Netherlands, although for experienced enthusiasts who have played in Athens and Spain the horror will appear to be moderate. However, the fact that this genre is barely exploited in the country accounts already for the enthusiastic reception this game has had locally in spite of being located out of the way of the classical escape room areas.

The game has some nice acting and a very professional use of sound and light, the puzzles were decent for a horror game. We felt that one of the tasks could have been exploited a bit differently and conducted as bravery test for individuals, so that it is less repetitive as a group, however they explained to us that due to the space constraints it is not possible to conduct the scares in another way if the group is split.

Overall, it was a very good game, that even made it into the Terpeca’s winner’s list this year, in spite of its geographical location. This will probably motivate some(horror loving) enthusiasts to do the drive to the North. As a pro tip, we played some decent games in a previous trip in Escape Room Drachten (still unreviewed), which is geographically close. That is a way to make the most out of the drive, although only to play this game it is already worth it.