RATING: 1 Key RESULT: Win REMAINING: 15:52
A missing professor, an unknown object of interest, and a few untrained interns. What could go wrong?
Professor R. K. Alogee needs your help! While hunting down the discovery of a lifetime, she seems to have finally found “it.” However, her research has drawn the attention of others, and the professor has gone missing. As her interns, it is up to you to retrace her footsteps and figure out what “it” is (and where the professor is) before others show up to raid her office…
We are tasked with finding the whereabouts of our esteemed colleague, Professor R.K. Alogee. As her trusted interns, are we the best ones to decode the notes and puzzles she has left behind?
The location of both the MacGuffin(an unnamed object that moves along our plot) and the Professor are what drives this group of junior adventurers to sift through any clues left behind before others in the Archaeological realm catch wind of our potential findings.
With the given background story, we expect to enter the generic office of an academic professor. Unfortunately it is exactly as we predicted. Walking in to the office, we are greeted with the standard office decor. It’s a bit messy, but nothing out of the ordinary that would lead us to expect an evolving plot line throughout our progress.
The walls are covered with generic maps of various continents and ancient cities, right out of a world history classroom. A large office chair and table are the centerpiece of the room, with various locked cabinets and chests scattered around the floor of the office. It does not look like the professor has ever had time to organize her notes nor her office supplies.
The space is limited in The Office of Professor R.K. Alogee, with only a single room. However, the clutter is set up in a way that feels like this is where an eccentric archaeologist would work. Nothing seems too out of place, but then again nothing sticks out at us as an element of interest.
The puzzles here feel overly dated in today’s market. Expect to see heavy scavenger hunt themes as clues and necessary puzzle pieces are hidden in frustrating ways in places you wouldn’t expect to look. At times we questioned whether we should keep dismantling an item, only to find out that a piece we were looking for was hidden deeper into the object we were taking apart.
Once the scavenger hunt is more or less complete, the standard key/combination lock fare can be found. Most of the puzzles here appear to be puzzles for puzzle sake. They don’t add to the narrative aside from just being related to some form of travel or an odd artifact.
One particular “puzzle” to call out would be the infamous puzzle box. If you haven’t opened this specific box before, it’s frustrating. Finding a way to remove the right pieces in the right order boils down to simply a time sink.
Given that we are interns, we should be doing what any up and coming archaeologist does, homework. As a result, there is a fair amount of map reading, encyclopedia referencing, and use of geography knowledge to get our way through these puzzles. The feeling of being back in our middle school History class leaves a lot to be desired on actually being challenged, or finding the relevancy of the clues left behind by our professor.
This is certainly not the first room with the premise of an Archaeologist and a MacGuffin, and certainly not the last, but for this common trope in games, there needs to be something to set it apart from your run of the mill game.
Mighty Awesome sets out to present us with a gripping narrative from start to finish, but fails to meet that goal along the way. The overall theme leaves much to be desired, and the limited space it occupies takes away from a game that could potentially uncovered plot twists along the way. Finally solving the mystery presented to us, it’s an anticlimactic end and ultimately forgettable.
Show your support for Escape Authority and get social with us:
Venue: Mighty Awesome Escape Rooms
Location: San Marcos, California
Number of Games: 2
GAME SPECIFIC INFORMATION:
Duration: 60 minutes
Capacity: 8 people
Group Type: Private / You will not be paired with strangers.
Cost: $32 per person