Review: Trapped! Escape Room - Pirate Tavern

RATING: 2 Keys RESULT: Loss REMAINING: X:XX

You’d think Blackbeard would hide his treasure in a more exciting location.

Story

You got a good tip that there is a fortune waiting for you within the local pirate tavern. Only it kind of belongs to Blackbeard, and he is on his way.

This group of looters received insider info that, for some bizarre reason, Captain Blackbeard has left his treasure unguarded inside a local tavern.

Who gave the tip? No clue.

Why has he left his gold inside an empty tavern? Enough with the questions!

With solid intel that he won’t be back for a full hour, it’s best not to look a gift parrot in the beak.

Scenic

One of the biggest challenges for pirate themed games is turning a room in an office building into a believable ocean-faring vessel. Pirate Tavern circumnavigates around that problem by setting the adventure squarely within a landlocked pub. Gone are the expectations of a creaky old boat, rocking in the ocean breeze. In theory, recreating an old tavern should be a much more achievable task.

Unfortunately, Pirate Tavern is rather bare, even by pirate standards. Adventurers testing their luck against Blackbeard will find themselves in a room with brick walls, a poker table, a bookshelf, and a desk… for some reason.

The only thing that really screams tavern is a small nook containing a bare-minimum bar accompanied by one stool. The scene is about as plain and straightforward as the name of the game itself, unencumbered by any frivolous creative flourishes.

The tavern appears more like a half-finished man cave, decorated with the well-worn leftovers of a pirate themed birthday party. The most egregious example of this is a sign that features a cartoon parrot and the phrase “it’s always five o’clock somewhere”. While I’m near positive that any modern day pirate worth their sea salt wouldn’t be caught dead or alive with this hanging in their local tavern, it is especially hard to believe that Blackbeard picked this one up at his local West Indies Party Central back in 1717.

Puzzles

Exposure to the puzzles of Pirate Tavern begins well before adventurers actually entered the titular room. The land-loving guide gives extensive directions on what to expect and how to reach the goal. Several puzzles are explained, with the most attention being given to the order in which various treasure chests must be unlocked to have a successful plundering session.

Speaking of which, there is a lot of them. Each with a different number on it’s respective lock. Prior to entry, we were informed that we would be working through these locks in reverse numerical order. Starting at 49, then 46, then 44, then 37 and so on and so forth. The numbers don’t appear to follow any specific sequence or offer any rhyme or reason as to why they are each numbered the way they are. Why not just number them 1, 2, 3… so adventurers could intuit their correct opening order?

Bizarrely, upon entry, we are additionally given a laminated sheet of paper that once again tells us the order in which these treasure chests must be unlocked. Throughout the course of our adventure we found even more written instructions that reinforced the previously-given directions on how to complete various puzzles successfully. On top of these written instructions, many clues were found that would explicitly spell out which lock they pertained to. It was hard to tell if the folks behind this caper had no faith in those trying to gain access to Blackbeards treasure, or their puzzles.

Either way, the over-explanation pointed to a lack of intuitive game flow. This is a problem, as even with the extra instructions, the game becomes bogged down in an abundance of text and numbers that is often hard to keep track of. Puzzles consist almost entirely of finding 3 or 4 digit codes to open combination locks. Many times, numbers were found with no way to determine the specific order in which they were to be used. Towards the end of our journey, the repetitive nature of the puzzles made us more exhausted than exhilarated.

Overall

All of this is not to say there wasn’t small moments of joy to be found within the brick walls of the tavern. A few puzzles did require outside of the treasure chest thinking that resulted in some satisfying “ah-ha!” moments. Additionally, the low expectations set by the lackluster scenic elements made one hidden reveal particularly surprising, even if it did require so much strength to open that, prior to success, we abandoned it a few times for fear of breaking it.

With a weak narrative, bare bones scenic elements, and repetitive and unintuitive puzzles, Pirate Tavern leaves a lot to be desired, and may be especially frustrating to first-timers.