#probably some Zelda game official art in the back corners of my brain

[thedailyvio]

Day 313

[askmerriauthor]

I’ll tell you how, after the break.  This event is still going on and I don’t want to give any unmarked spoilers for people who are actually interested in going.

So when I heard that there would be a Legend of Zelda escape room, I was all on board.  LoZ gameplay is all about escape rooms - Link ends up in various dungeons where he has to use his brain and brawn to overcome challenges.  Sounds like a match made in Heaven, right?

Right off the bat, there’s a problem with the location.  The event was held in a hotel conference hall/ballroom, which immediately means that there is limited space and not much opportunity to customize the area.  Instead of you being locked in a small zone with a few teammates, there’s over 100 people all sharing the same room, all doing the challenges at the same time.

The production value is garbage.  Some of the staff were wearing costumes that looked like they were pulled out of a Dollar Store Halloween bin.  A guy who was supposed to be a Goron was literally just wearing a brown apron.  The “Kokiri Forest” was a two-foot tall paper-mâché tree covered in brown paint and black Sharpie.  The “lands of Hyrule” are corners of the room sectioned off by drapes, featuring cardboard cutouts of the characters from the N64 Ocarina of Time game printed on them.  Like, downloaded straight off the internet and printed at Kinko’s style.  Not even original art.  For the “story”, they literally just played cutscenes from the aforementioned N64 game spliced with static screen shots on a projector.  This is the sort of shoestring budget I’d expect to see at a children’s school play, not at a paid and officially sponsored event.

So the escape room itself?  Not an escape room.  All the 100+ guests were divided into teams of six and given a binder, which contained various puzzles.  And by puzzles, I mean the sort of brain-teasers you’d find on the back of a Denny’s kid’s menu play mat.  Some of them weren’t really even puzzles at all, such as one card that was more or less a “connect the dots” game.  There were some physical puzzles as well that require a bit more critical thinking.

Well... they would have required critical thinking, except the instruction sheets with each of those physical puzzles literally tells you the exact steps to “solve” it.  Those aren’t hints - it’s a walk through.  Any sense of cleverness is sidestepped as you’re spoon fed the answers and sent off to the next task.

A big logistical problem with the setup so far is that there’s over 100 people all in the same place, doing the same puzzles, at the same time.  This includes puzzles that require use of the limited staff and resources, which means teams have to wait in line for a turn at the resources.  IN A LIMITED-TIMED GAME.  My team didn’t win the game because we were literally stuck en route waiting while the clock ran down.

For 98% of the puzzles, it’s all pretty straightforward stuff.  The last two suddenly turn completely abstract in a bad way.  See, I like difficult puzzles.  I like it when you need to put on your thinking cap and really flex your mental muscles to come up with a solution.  The mark of a good puzzle is one that makes you work for the answer.  The last two, however, are artificial difficulty.  They’re not challenging but rather are just nonsensical, to the point where you sort of stumble across the answer by chance rather than any form of deductive reasoning.

The very last puzzle, however, pissed me off.  It breaks the rules.  See, you’re told straight-up that you’re not supposed to use any sort of outside knowledge or items.  They’ll give you everything you need during the game to solve the puzzles.  When I first arrived at the venue, I signed in at the front desk and was given a lariat with my table number on it, which let me find the rest of my team.  The solution to the last puzzle requires you to disassemble the lariat and destroy it.  The lariat that, at no point during the game, is ever referenced or indicated as being part of the game.  The lariat that they gave you BEFORE THE GAME EVEN STARTED, OUTSIDE OF THE GAME ROOM, AS PART OF REGISTRATION.

This is not how you make a challenging puzzle.  That is abstract to the point of uselessness.  Think of it like this - wouldn’t you be pissed off after reading a mystery novel to find out that, in order to learn who the murderer is, you need to cut open the cover of the book to reveal a secret character who didn’t appear in the story?  Wouldn’t that strike you as kind of bullshit?  ESPECIALLY since the staff make it clear before the game starts that we’re supposed to return all the items we’re given since they need them for other scheduled games?

The overall crowd for the game was in the late-20s/late-30s range.  Definitely the nostalgia group, no doubt about that.  There was one little boy there with his parents, who was probably five or six years old.  I’m sure he had a blast since these puzzles were right around his age range for difficulty.  But while everyone started out enthusiastic, it was very clear as the hour went on how rapidly the energy in the room dissipated.  By the time everyone finished up and were ready to leave at the end, the annoyance in the air was palpable.

Want some cherries on top of this unpleasant sundae of disappointment?  I like swag, even if it’s cheap swag, so I purchased the Gold Ticket version which costs about $20 more than the standard ticket, but you get a poster and a Triforce-themed coin as a gift.  I had my confirmation email and receipt on hand at registration, but for some reason their registry showed me as only being a normal ticket purchase.  Despite me clearly having the confirmation and receipt right there in my hand.  So they just kind of shrugged and told me “too bad, no swag for you”.  So, I’m just out $20 with nothing to show for it.  Though honestly, after how absolutely abysmal the whole experience was, I don’t even want the swag anymore just because it would piss me off to see it.

The real finisher to it all was that, outside the game room, they had official Nintendo reps on site with the Nintendo Switch and demos of the new “Breath of the Wild” game for attendees to play.  Awesome, I thought to myself, at least I can get hands-on with the new game and system before launch.  Except then it turns out that only people who finished all the puzzles and “escaped” got to play the demo.  If you didn’t finish, you’re just out of luck.

So... yeah.  I’d love a refund, or at least a pay back of the $20 bucks they shorted me with their incorrect registration files, but their website makes it very clear they don’t do that kind of customer service.  Given the horrible lack of quality and effort on display with the “Defenders of the Triforce” event, I can’t honestly say I’m surprised.