A sequel to the award-nominated multiplayer escape game Mad Experiments. Play alone or with up to 5 friends, as you follow the story of Hildegarde and Professor Cheshire, explore rich environments to find clues, and solve mind-bending puzzles to escape...

As Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist Carl Jung would say, synchronicity is a strange thing. As I sit to write this review for Mad Experiments 2: Escape Room, my greatest complaint would have been that it throws you into the game with no starting point and no clues how to start. But then, having recently been in a physical escape room, I know that this is exactly how it works.

The game is playable as a solo or multiplayer experience

The game consists of three main rooms and a prologue, just to give a smidgen of context and motivation. Each room requires the player to examine their surroundings and all the objects there. There are codes to decipher, the first being how to turn on the power to get light.

Not that this makes a lot of difference as the game is oddly very dark, making it sometimes difficult to find clues that may be hidden behind another object. The game has clues to analyse and puzzles to ponder over. If you get stuck there is a hint system.

The manner of the puzzles is, for the most part, logical. Although, some can be unnecessarily obtuse. So, you spend time with trial and error. Even when you've solved some puzzles, you're still left scratching your head over the underlying logic of the solution.

The game is playable as a solo experience, though it does offer a multiplayer experience should you want to reenact the real experience of endless arguments with people who used to be your friends.

The game has an eerie steam punk, Victorian aesthetic

This time around, the team have gone for an eerie steam punk, Victorian aesthetic. The graphics are much improved from the original game and the atmosphere is suitably mysterious with the lighting and textures adding to the whole ambience.

Overall, the game offers a solid, if short, experience. You should be able to get through the four play areas in less than two hours. Puzzle enthusiasts will find an enjoyable experience, but the lack of narrative depth may turn others off.

That said, being stuck in a room with little in the way of clues and audio distractions does replicate the real experience of an escape room well.

6

Charles Packer