Work as a secret agent to thwart the infamous art curator and suspected art thief, Vincent Hahn. You’ll need to uncover his true identity, connect him to a crime, and work with the International Police to finally exact justice. With the help of your Intelligence Agent, you’ll need to stop Hahn before another masterpiece goes missing.
	No time limit
	1-4 players recommended
	Difficulty level not stated
	$10 per team
	Online (based in USA)
	theescapegame.com
	Played by Daiman, Paul, Bharath
	May 2020
	Completed in about 2 hours

Theming

8/10Very slick. All your operations are through the agency’s database and the dashboard very much looks like Hollywood’s idea of an espionage intranet site. There were also plenty of recorded video with our liaison, keeping us immersed in the story. The other materials such as surveillance photos and building blueprints all fit the part, coming together to build a very believable world that was simple to jump into and get cracking.

 Daiman

9/10The Heist is a multi-part digital play at home game that can be played at any time on any device with an internet connection. Our mission was to piece together the evidence already obtained on a prolific art thief to work out his real identity and stop him from stealing any more masterpieces. We had to peruse through his known associates, his prior stolen artwork, his past life and his potential next target museums. It all felt very real and thoroughly immersed me into the story. This is a high quality production with a slick website that contains our digital dossier and tasks, as well as professionally produced videos of our contact from the agency we are working for, who gave us our mission and updates.

Paul

8/10[score only]

 Bharath

Puzzles

8/10There was a nice flow to everything that we had to undertake and everything seemed logical apart from one bit towards the end that felt ever so slightly unclear. One thing to remember here as it held us up early in the game, with these play at home games, you need to drop some of the physical escape room etiquette and think about what the real world solution to a particular problem would be. Vague I know but we deliberately resisted doing something that turned out to be the correct approach (we reviewed the game’s hints after completion). This followed through into another task, that again, was the correct thing to do but we declined to carry out as the game is US based so distance factored into our decision to not perform what was required. Treat this game as though it’s real!

 Daiman

8/10You need both logic and investigative skills to piece together evidence from various web pages and PDF documents. We had to access his hard drive, confirm his identity and scour through CCTV footage, amongst other things. There were a couple of puzzles, but this mostly requires logical thinking as you work through the data. This helped with the realism and kept me engaged throughout. A few areas could have been tweaked though. There was a text field which disappeared due to poor styling which unnecessarily wasted a lot of time. It also wasn’t clear that we had to do a Google search and call a US phone number, which left us uncertain at the time. Being in the UK, we didn’t know how much the call would cost us, but we found the information required in the help section so didn’t need to ring it.

Paul

8/10[score only]

 Bharath

Enjoyment

9/10Yeah, I had a lot fun with this one – it’s extremely well presented and provides an immersive experience that’s more consistent than other games that we’ve played. The puzzles all felt pitched at the right difficulty with everything coming across as fair and logical, no hair-tearing moments here!

 Daiman

8/10As The Heist is a digital game, you can play it with distant friends with the help of a video conference app that allows screen sharing e.g. Zoom or Google Hangouts. This is what we did and it worked well, although it would have been more enjoyable if we were all in the same room as being split up adds extra complexity and confusion. There is no time limit to this game and you can save your progress and return to it at a later date if required. The downside to this is I lost the sense of urgency which does make a difference. As The Escape Game have gone for a very realistic experience, some people may find the puzzles aren’t as fun to complete.

Paul

8/10[score only]

 Bharath

Value

9/10$10 per game is great value. The overall quality of the experience is of a high standard and the presentation alone makes this one worth playing. I don’t think you can really go wrong with gathering a few friends and giving this a spin one evening!

 Daiman

9/10The Heist costs $10 per team. This worked out at less than £3 per person for our 3-person team for a polished professionally created game that kept us entertained for around 2 hours. Play at home experiences, whilst not being as fun as a bricks and mortar escape room, do have the benefit of being far cheaper to play. Plus for ones with no live host, like this one, you can play them whenever you want with whoever you want as distance is not a problem. No printer is necessary for The Heist which leaves it open for anyone to play, as well as saving on printing costs. If you’ve always wanted to experience what it would be like to be an investigator, this may be the closest you can get!

Paul

8/10[score only]

 Bharath

Overall scores