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Escape Room Reviews: The Clockwork Caper
Company: Perplexity Games
Room: The Clockwork Caper
Location: Cleveland, OH
Date Played: 12/27/17
Player Count: 3
Success: Unprecedented success!
Premise: Sneak into the lab of inventor Patrick O'Malley and discover the secrets of his new machine for your boss, Thomas Edison!
Immersion: The production design of the room looks a little bit thrown together, but if anything, it's probably too clean for a real inventor's workshop.
Highlights: We supposedly set a speed record and impressed our GM with how quickly we escaped. (I have this theory that the Escape Room GM Handbook tells you to tell every group how uncommonly smart, speedy, and handsome your team is, and if necessary how you came *this close* to solving it!)
The non-linear design let our group split up and to each work with separate puzzles.
Lowlights:
This room feels very short. By my reckoning, and by reckoning I mean carefully-drawn-after-the-fact map of the room, The Clockwork Caper has about half as many items / points of interest as almost any other game i've played. I was definitely surprised that the ending was, in fact, the ending.
There were a couple of mechanical puzzles that we probably solved more through brute force than actually understanding the underlying systems.
And Finally: What really drew me to this game was that the rooms seemed to be designed to have a connection to Cleveland history. There was a moment in the end game that really missed out on the chance to drive that connection home.
We felt good about ourselves for cruising through a room, but unsatisfied with the experience overall, leading to my first time playing 2 rooms in one day. Out of 14 games played, I would rank this one #10.
How to book this room yourself: Visit https://www.perplexitygames.com
#2,304: Moonlight
Diani and Devine Meet the Apocalypse - ★★★★★
I've seen this movie countless times in the course of making it, but I'm logging a screening at the Mill Valley Film Festival, one of two festivals that premiered the movie within days of each other.
In my own, utterly biased opinion, this is the best feature I've worked on in any way. It's so nigh-on impossible to find a project that you can really believe in, and even if you do, the odds of it turning out good are so very slim. But here we are, and somehow, watching for the umpteenth time but for the first time with a full theater of mostly strangers, I still enjoyed watching the movie. It's a hard thing to explain to someone who hasn't run this particular gauntlet, but that never happens.
There're jokes, there're adorable pets, there's serious stuff that I think is great, and there's kind of a grim truth underneath it all that I can relate to. I mean, what if the world DID end tomorrow? Sure, the part where the world ends would be tough, but at least then if I don't "make it" in showbiz it's not really my fault, right?
It played great with the crowd and we even picked up an audience award. I hope you get to see it.
Where to Invade Next - ★★½☆☆
Starts off so goofy that you want to turn it off, but eventually it calms down until it gets so dull that you want to turn it off.
The Accountant - ★★★½☆
I liked this one. I was interested in the characters and the world, not least because of how they avoided a long heavy blast of exposition in the beginning. I thought that was great, so it's kind of a drag when they give it to you anyway later on. The third act is unsatisfying in the way that Luke Cage is unsatisfying - the world is too small.
ARQ - ★★½☆☆
Live, Die, Repeat.
Moonlight - ★★★★☆
When I'm watching stand-ups, especially open mic'ers, especially the bad ones, I always hold out this little hope that it's all just an act, and we're in the capable hands of someone who has thought their art through. It's virtually never the case, of course, but I am an optimist.
What I liked about this movie was that I had zero idea of what it was going in, and that the filmmakers seemed to know what they were doing. It's a little rough around the edges, it feels more indie and homemade than anything else I've seen lately, and it's not perfect, but it works, and maybe most importantly, it feels like the movie the filmmakers wanted to make.
Also, I always see the girl from Guardians of the Galaxy in the poster.
Set List: Mailchimp!
Apologies from the whole Set List family to the whole Mail Chimp family, since the page where I got their logo explicitly says not to use it for these kind of... monkeyshines.
Showreel 2017
Regularly scheduled blog service for 2017 kicks off with this new demo reel, for all of your effects and graphics needs.
If you need help making your thing, I can help you make your thing! Look at all of these other people I helped with their thing! That could be you!