RATING: 3 Keys RESULT: Win REMAINING: 3:12
San Diego is in trouble! It’s time to send in our best fresh recruits to tackle the job.
An evil super villain with a vendetta against the world has created a poisonous substance that he is planning on releasing first to all of San Diego county, then the world! We sent our spies in months ago to infiltrate his lab and get more info, but we haven’t heard from them in a week! With the safety of the entire world at stake, we need your help!
San Diego is on high alert with a tip from the FBI that an attack will happen. This is not just any normal run of the mill threat, this is a SUPER villain coming to ruin the day. But why is this villain holding a vendetta against the world? It just happens that San Diego comes in first on the list of the testing grounds. Consider us lucky.
The last team that went in to gather info and prevent this attack has not reported back. It’s time to send in the B-team, I mean A-team of junior FBI agents to tackle the case! Our task is given to infiltrate the lair, find the antidote, stop the attack, and take all the glory.
After a quick briefing with our FBI contact, who just so happens to be our GM in disguise, we are pumped to break in and foil any plots in development. It’s a good thing we just graduated from the academy before stopping by!
Villain’s Lair takes place across two very distinct rooms. At first agents start out in a standard fare laboratory. A villain has to craft their chemical weapons somewhere right?
Being set in a lab does have its perks for rooms contained in a generic office. The cabinets and shelves blend in as equipment storage and evil scheming device holders. Various vials of what we can only assume are different poison agents line these shelves. Just don’t drop any of the doomsday devices whilst rummaging.
Transitioning past the laboratory, FBI B-team members step into the villain’s actual lair, or his personal bedroom, up to ones interpretation. The space does look lived in, with various furniture strewn about the room, our villain must have made a quick escape right before we entered.
From the looks of it, the mark is your stereotypical castaway geek. His shelves are full of comic books, action figures, and nerdy accessories; all devices used as key research for his evil plans. At least agents catch a small break, with a large map pinpointing further information on future schemes. It was nice of him to leave out all the information needed to synthesize an antidote.
A vast majority of this game flows extremely well at a quick pace. While the room is a bit on the smaller side, it is absolutely packed with puzzles to keep junior FBI agents busy with relevant work.
There’s a good mix of standard lock and key fare puzzles, to go along with a few extremely unique tech driven puzzles. The standout tech puzzle, without giving too much away, relies heavily on being thorough with your actions. This team of agents need to have their wits about them to unravel the clues left behind in the villain’s hasty exit.
Unfortunately, a particular puzzle was one of the most frustrating team building type puzzles we have ever experienced. Many rooms have at least one of these puzzles, where multiple team members have to communicate between each other to manipulate something around.
Here, one team member is essentially on the ground in a tight space, trying to blindly move objects on a table above. The problem comes from the thin margin for error. Mistakenly move an object and it will set the team back for what seems like an eternity to fix the problem.
Clue Avenue does a great job setting up the mood from the GM interaction playing in to the storyworld to set the tone for the room, to the overall pacing of the game. The amount of work to be done throughout the game is enough to keep even larger groups occupied on relevant tasks for the duration.
The major issue holding back this room is the team building puzzle. However, upon returning to this venue, we were shown a newly re-worked version of the puzzle. Nearly all the frustration, and definitely the cramped spaces are gone now. Now the puzzle is implemented in a way that is still challenging, but with more room to play around and figure it out.
But with the villain’s plan dispatched, we do get to save the day!
Show your support for Escape Authority and get social with us:
Venue: Clue Avenue
Location: Escondido, 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: $35 per person