The first time I saw this game on Reddit I was very much hooked, to the point of buying it with a friend.
I'm not saying I am disappointed or that I regret playing it, it was fun, but less than I had imagined.
○
Visually, the game is pleasant, a simple cartoonish style, that helps with recognizing the different objects without the details that a realistic style would require.
The issue is that they compensate with so many useless objects in every room, that end up cluttering the environment.
You could say that so many objects were put there to make it feel more like a real escape room, with lots of deceiving items, but you have an icon that helps you know if they have a purpose or can be discarded, so they are there just to clutter.
Honestly, at first I didn't notice that icon, and this made me realize how all those objects actually made it worse.
In a real escape room, you can use an object for what it is at least, here only some items actually do stuff.
For example, you will find a brush that can be used to clean, but the shovel just can't be used, and we lost some minutes trying to figure out if we could use it to dig.
This can be true for other kinds of objects too and can be frustrating.
○
The other thing that was a letdown was the size of the rooms.
I was expecting every level to be at least 2 rooms before completing it, what I got was instead 1 room for every level, but the worst thing was that every level was like a 2 meter x 2 meter square room.
It was sooo tiny, it was hard to move, and imagine having it cluttered with objects, it was really annoying and felt unnecessary, they could have made them be at least a bit bigger.
About the "at least 2 rooms", I know that you have more levels for every story, but each of the level/room is completely separate from the other., while I imagined something with 2-3 rooms per level with a bit of backtracking.
The rooms, like they are now, feel like every one of them is a sort of demo of an escape room, but never a full one.
That's not to say I did not have fun, it was funny to complete the rooms, solving the puzzles, some of them are also somewhat original, but it wasn't as immersive and entertaining as I would have expected.
○
As for the cooperation part, I think they did an overall good job at giving you multiple things to do at any time so that you can try to resolve a puzzle while someone else can solve another one, and then exchange information.
Or when u have to input some data from a paper and you ask the other one to read it while you do it.
These are probably the funnier moments.
There are times when it feels more linear but overall not much.
Maybe I would have liked more puzzles that actually require at least 2 people to do a thing at the same time, while there are really just like 2 or 3.
○
I appreciate that they made an editor in-game, and also have tried some community rooms, like 6-8 of them.
Not much of course, but it's still a bit early to have a consistent set of good community rooms.
I played 2 of them that were actually good.
One where u and the other player have to go separate ways and so u need to tell each other what u see and communicate a lot. It was really fun and truly required cooperation, even though the actual puzzle were very classic/simple.
The other one was a big haunted mansion and was actually what I expected this game to be (maybe even a bit more than I would have expected). Was really funny and complete, with a story and lots of puzzles, the only issue is that it was very laggy, probably pushing the editor to its limits.
○
Overall this is a nice game to play with friends (maybe alone could be not so worthy), and I think it will get better with time, if more official rooms are being made and if the community gets better at building them (and maybe with a better way to rate/discover the community rooms).