Review: The Infected Room: Part II of the Zombie Apocalypse

RATING: 5 Keys RESULT: Win REMAINING: 8:38

The 2^nd installment in this Zombie-themed trilogy reminds us how truly important sneezing in your elbow really is, or else we all become… infected.

Story

The Plague Doctor’s experiments, through testing formulas on lab rats, has managed to expose the human caretakers working in the lab. You are the only remaining people who are truly still human, for around you are those who are in various stages of turning into the undead. Beware! Because they are early in their transition, they have not lost all of their faculties and may be keeping an ear out for you.

The Infected Room is the second installment in the Zombie Apocalypse Trilogy: Part I – The Zombie Room; Part II – The Infected Room; and Part III – The Cure Room.

The series was launched in 2015, when we were introduced to the mastermind set on testing biological treatments in order to fight a zombie outbreak – The Plague Doctor. The Infected Room flashes us back in time to when he is early in the process of developing and testing his formulas on lab rats.

Of course, things are destined to quickly go south, and several employees are infected by the rats and are in the process of becoming zombies. While these victims have lost a few of their cognitive abilities and have been rendered blind, they still retain one of the most helpful senses when hunting fresh meat – exceptional hearing.

Scenic

In this installment, players start off in a simple containment area lined with bars and large enough to house a small community of captives. Unlike a jail cell, however, this dimly lit room does offer a means of escape for those who are astute enough to find the sparse sources of light available. Once access is gained, a lengthy enclosed pathway tunnels to the next area of the game.

Now free to stand and explore this new space, players find themselves in what appears to be a back alley – perhaps right outside the lab where our maniacal nemesis is conducting his tests. While spending a fair amount of time crawling and sneaking through the darkness, we had to make sure to be as quiet as possible while also keeping an eagle eye out for trailing zombies who were within arm’s reach to infect us.

As we proceeded through the crawling maze, we observed that some of the zombies were in different states of transformation. Some only managed gibberish, while others mumbled barely coherent words. One had even fallen sick, throwing up through the open fencing from overhead. Coordination and timing definitely came in handy inside this passageway, as those who did not heed their surroundings found themselves being thrown up on.

The final scene of the game introduced players into a vast, open area. Scenically speaking, it was fitting that there were not a huge number of visuals and props in this space. After all, this was the beginning of an apocalypse – and chaos in progress. The boundaries were lined with some trash and remnants from local places of business being raided and abandoned. On the opposite end of a zombie and chaos-filled room, a single doorway stood as our only means of escape from the deadly plague.

Puzzles

Before we could work on discovering the way out of our communal cage, we had to track down whatever we could find to shed light on the clues and puzzles that would lead the way. Not having enough illumination to go around meant that we had to form small teams to tackle the challenges.

Once we opened the pathway to the next phase, we scurried single file on bended knees to the next space, only to find that in our haste, we were forced to backtrack to recover missed clues. Incredibly, this happened multiple times, likely due to the added pressure of having gnarls and snarls closing in on you from the darkness. Each time we sent team members back into the tunnel maze, it increased the risk of being heard and thus discovered by more zombies who could potentially block our way out.

As should be commonplace in a true post-apocalyptic setting without power and electronic resources, technology was barely noticeable and not a huge character in this game. Well hidden in the dim light, resources had to be located through much patience and extensive search and find.

Because players had to remain as quiet as possible, coming up with ways to communicate and move about without alerting the zombies to your location took some creativity. Gameplay required players to work well with other team members and share clues found along the way. In one case, a of our team members sacrificed themselves to a zombie in order to get a vital component passed along in order to advance the rest of the team. Now, that’s a team player!

While the puzzles in The Infected Room were hardly advanced, it was all we could do to keep our wits about us moving in the darkened spaces while trying to be as quiet as possible. Drawing attention to oneself by making any sound at all would quickly result in being sensed by the zombies and literally becoming dead meat. Once in a wide open space, our more skittish team members started dropping like flies and couldn’t hold in their audible reactions to zombies roaming so freely close by.

Overall

This was the best installment of the Zombie Apocalypse trilogy. While it was along the same lines as the other two games, there was one exception: the zombies were very different and unique in this episode. It was quite unnerving that they could walk right by you and move around you and not be a danger to you unless they heard you. Truly a different experience!

Although this intense game is now closed, The Escape Room now has an experience along the lines of The Purge. Needless to say, if you are a fan of haunts, movie monsters, or horror in general, then be sure to add this stop to your bucket list of escape room venues to visit – and please do so before the world ends of a zombie plague.