RATING: 0 Keys RESULT: Win REMAINING: 21:36
Winter is coming. Winter has arrived. Actually, just stick with summer.
Dark, long and cold winter has come. Severe blizzard hides the army of mysterious enemies. Our knights fight the dead to defend the living. You have to visit and conquer the Kingdom of Night room inspired by the famous series, and find your way out in 60 minutes or….
Or… what? No consequence is ever really established. The famous series in question seems pretty clearly implied to be Game of Thrones. As such, it can be assumed that it might be characters… ahem… inspired by the White Walkers descending upon the location, but again, there is no real explanation.
The storyworld boils down to “well, it’s presumably a Game of Thrones themed attraction!” and that is about it. With no other in-world explanation or dramatic twists and turns found mid-adventure, the story falls flat.
The first room is very dark, which makes sense as it is “apparently” the Kingdom of Night, however, the only real illumination comes in the form of plastic tea lights that flicker. This could be a cool effect if there was some other kind of lighting, perhaps a slightly brighter lantern to help read important information needed. Unfortunately, there is no such aid.
Getting into the next room (which is well lit, thankfully) requires the entire chivalric order to crawl through a hole in the back of a closet located in front of a logical spot on a wall for a door to be. The better lighting, however, highlights the lacking scenic design.
The “décor” amounts to a few posters stapled to the wall and a couple of shelves of various sizes with items on them. There are banners that appear to mimic houses from Game of Thrones, and… that’s it. That’s the look. Other than the potentially branded items from a TV show one might assume has not been licensed for use in this game, there really isn’t anything additional to play into a fantasy world akin to Westeros.
The puzzles are very linear, which would be fine if the trajectory made sense. In Kingdom of Night, a combination or key does not indicate where it might go most of the time. While some are clearer than others, most commonly, they require trial and error.
A lot of the posters on the wall have information needed to solve the various tasks. However, between a combination of limited lighting and the poor state of laminated clues, many items can’t be seen or read properly. Providing an additional light source would solve this problem as legibility was not an issue in the brighter areas.
Additionally, several puzzles do not intuitively make sense. The final challenge, which takes a considerable amount of time and space, requires previous knowledge of having seen or read Game of Thrones. There is no way around this solution, so without that knowledge, the guests cannot proceed on their own.
Kingdom of Night has many issues with it. If the adventure is going to be “inspired by” a famous series, it needs to creatively find a way to make itself unique in the reasonably assumed absence of officially licensing the IP. Kingdom of Night fails at the distinctive story, and presumably disregards the licensure, instead providing some familiar looking symbols that could possibly resemble merchandise from the show.
On top of everything else, the number of things that need to be solved or opened is fairly low, potentially hindering game flow to the point of running considerably short, especially for larger groups. Between that, the vague story, lack of intuition behind the puzzles, and requirement of prior knowledge from Game of Thrones, Kingdom of Night goes the way of Viserion, without any benefit of resurrection.
#KyleForgotToTakeAPic
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Venue: Art of Escape Room
Location: Chicago, Illinois
Number of Games: 2
GAME SPECIFIC INFORMATION:
Duration: 60 minutes
Capacity: 5 people
Group Type: Private / You will not be paired with strangers.
Cost: $99-165 depending on total group size
