Deadlocked: The Movember Virtual Moscape Room review

Cohesive comes to mind here. The use of the desktop as an entryway keeps everything on-theme and the many videos supplement the immersion, making for a full, well-rounded experience. Bringing this all together is the silly but fun story – at no point do you feel as though you are working through arbitrary puzzles, everything you undertake serves and progresses the narrative. Of Deadlocked’s three online games, this latest offering is by far the most polished.

Deadlocked have teamed up with men’s health charity Movember for their latest online escape room. They’ve used their annual moustache-based event as the premise for the game, with you rushing to find a razor before it starts. Like with their other games, it’s also linked to the overarching Wexell Corporation. There’s a rich story with ample good quality videos and a nice progression. It’s a unique mix of puzzling, storytelling, humour, sleuthing, rapping, health awareness and choose your own adventure.

You play from a mock-up PC desktop, but messaging is via a Facebook chatbot (so you’ll need an account) and videos are via YouTube. It’s a shame these haven’t been embedded into their interface for a fully cohesive and flowing experience, but that is the only real negative to an otherwise well constructed and highly immersive game.

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As with their previous games, there’s an ARG element to some of the tasks here. I’m personally a massive fan of this style as it adds to the immersion when you have to ‘explore’ real locations (via your chosen map site) or liaise with characters on social media sites. These moments increase the scope of the game and help give you the sense that you’re actually a part of the unfolding events. They’re done well here, supplementing the more typical escape room style puzzles. Working through the problems is a dream; everything is clean, and at no point were we unclear about what we had to do. It is definitely Deadlocked’s most accessible game.

The game begins with a choice of ‘first timer’ or ‘enthusiast’, allowing you to set the difficulty level. This is a nice touch and we obviously went the enthusiast route. Even so, this was the easiest and most approachable of their online games so far with no infuriatingly difficult tasks this time! All puzzles are browser-based, and you’ll also need to trawl through websites to garner information on certain people and places, similar to their previous offerings.

Everything was nicely designed and there were no logic leaps. But if you do get stuck, help is just a click away. I liked that the clues were provided verbally in character which helped retain immersiveness. We completed the game in around 96 minutes, but there must be a bug as the certificate at the end showed us as taking one hour longer than that.

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Yeah, I had a great time with this one. If you like Deadlocked’s other games, A Close Shave is everything you’d expect it to be but more refined and polished. It feels like a smaller game but everything is much more precise, with no parts where it felt like a puzzle had one too many steps. The frequent use of video really adds to the experience. They’re a welcome part of the game, keeping things much more interesting than reading scores of text on a screen. That’s the key takeaway here – Deadlocked understand that it’s not just about solving a few puzzles, but creating a world that you can disappear into for 90 minutes.

We may have been a bit late to the party with this one, but it doesn’t matter if it’s Movember, Manuary or Mapril, I highly recommend playing Moscape. It’s one of the best online escape rooms out there, covering every aspect of playability, story and enjoyment. The varied videos are a pleasure to watch, the games aren’t overly taxing and I just really enjoyed seeing where the story took us. At certain points, you can choose your journey from 3 options which is fun. It’s a tad disappointing I couldn’t see what the other options would have given us though.

There’s also unknown achievements to unlock (we only got 2 out of 6) and a rap song to create. Hilariously, when sleuthing, we stumbled upon an X-rated Facebook profile. It may not happen to anyone else, but it’s something to bear in mind if you’re playing with children!

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At £15, with £5 going to charity, you get one of the best online games that I’ve played. As mentioned earlier, what sets this game apart is the multimedia aspect of it. It is always doing something different and remains engaging because of this. Deadlocked have gone the extra mile in creating this experience, producing a fun, immersive 90 minutes.

Movember Virtual Moscape Room is Deadlocked’s most polished, immersive, enjoyable and accessible play at home escape game to date. At £15 per team, it does cost a little more than their other games, but £5 of the asking price goes to the Movember charity so you’re also doing a good deed as you play. Even with that, it’s still a competitive price considering what you get. No printer is required this time either, so there’s no additional expenses. You really can’t go much wrong purchasing this game.

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