Our mission in the Arctic Survival room was to piece together a radio so that we could establish communication with our rescuers who had an hours worth of fuel. The different parts of the radio were scattered around the old cabin and we would have to solve a series of puzzles to locate them and place them on the wall.
Arctic Survival is described as the hardest room that Vire have to offer at their Aylesbury branch and it is fair to say that we did find ourselves challenged in completing this room. There are actually not a huge number of puzzles inside the game, but rather a small series of more difficult problems to solve. In hindsight, these puzzles at their core are not all together that difficult. However, we found that the framing of the tasks, and sometimes a lack of prompts around the room to guide us made them more difficult than they really were. Ultimately this meant we spent a lot longer solving puzzles than we would have done normally.
Ambiguity aside, there are some really clever challenges in this room. Although we needed an initial clue to figure it out, we loved how the code to one of the locks was deciphered and had never played that particular puzzle before. There was use of items that in any other room we would discard which were actually quite important to the game (and the theme if we’re thinking back to immersion and being trapped in the cold Arctic). Alongside the traditional lock and key puzzles there were skill based tasks which again, we haven’t played before and really enjoyed in the room. We also liked the darkness of the room, not only did this tie in nicely with the theme but it made some of the easier puzzles challenging too.
We can’t imagine many teams complete the game without clues, particularly on some of the more niche puzzles that involve things you would normally leave alone in an escape room. In addition, one quite difficult task occupied a lot of our time firstly because we tried to use it too early, and secondly because we had to wait for our cue to periodically make an appearance. Another task took longer than needed because the clue was hand written and almost ineligible. It did feel a little bit more difficult than it should have been.
That being said, we were thrilled to escape the room and learn that we had achieved the room record of 48 minutes tied with another group.