Research showed that Isla Revelles, an uncharted island, was rich with clean energy resources. So why wouldn’t the locals won’t go anywhere near the island? Ferrox Industries were not put off by any rumours and had sent a specialist mining team to the island to start testing and transporting the resources. However, after building the mining base, the entire team mysteriously disappeared!
The City Adventurers were immediately dispatched (May 2023) to the island (Southampton) to find the missing scientific team.
We were actually heading to EXTINCT! at Houdini’s in Southampton
Review
I’d read good reviews of this game and was very keen to experience this. So I persuaded the team to visit Extinct to see how great it was.
Unfortunately I should have taken them somewhere else……
Houdini’s is situated within the Tenpin venue in Southampton. We arrived at the Houdini’s area in time to sign the waiver forms, but were still wandering around the empty waiting room without being greeted nearly half an hour later – after the time we should have started the game!
The waiting area was dark and we hoped the actual game would prove brighter…..
Eventually we met our GM, signed the waiver forms and were shown through to a cinema area for a briefing. Not the slickest show we’ve seen, which ended with the whirling sound of a helicopter. In fact, the helicopter noise went on so long we wondered if we should leave the cinema and started to look for the way out!
Don’t know what the delay was, but eventually our Games Master/helicopter pilot burst in to take us to start the game.
So not off to a good start. Things could only get better.
The first room is the evacuation site where we needed to return when we had completed our mission. Luckily it looked like things were looking up. The set build, with a jeep, was good and the puzzles eased us into the story. Inside the game was a little dark but we found a couple of torches, so it wasn’t too bad.
But….
What was bad were the broken props. The whole place felt tatty. The game was very tired and seemed to have been left to rot. One puzzle even had an “out of order” sign attached!
It must have looked impressive when it first opened but now it was in an extremely sorry state.
That being said, there were some nice touches. The game was quite physical rather than relying on technology. It involved some climbing, some crawling and even some evading. Although not everyone had to do all the physical challenges. The puzzles themselves incorporated a wide variety of skills and kept all the team busy.
Hints
One of us had been elected as the “communications expert” and handed a walkie talkie. This way of giving hints and clues made sense as it was in keeping with the theme. However, we shared the role as there was a slight problem understanding the communications with our helicopter pilot.
The Ending
Having completed our mission, we were ready to head back to the evacuation site. However there was another delay as we awaited permission to leave the Ferrox complex.
After a short wait we were allowed to return to the evacuation site to rejoin our pilot. That’s when we discovered this game has a twist…..to win the game your mission must be completed correctly!
Of course we succeeded and won the game.
Mission completed in 49 minutes.
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