The Prohibition (Game duration 60 minutes)
Fury team: Velina Tomova, Hristo Tomov, Dimitar Smilyanov, Nadezhda Danabasheva
Fury time: 32:23 minutes (room record at the time of the visit)
Witches Abroad team: Alla Danabasheva, Vanya Stoitseva, Anton Konduzov, Svetla Ivanova
Witches Abroad time: 59:54 minutes
Date: February 23, 2019
The sweetest thing for me is to go to a room that has been on the market for almost two years and make a record. This is also the case with The Codex Prohibition. The topic is popular enough, and I think almost every capital city has one room related to the prohibition and smuggling of alcohol and the history of the American mafia.
The design of the room is interesting, especially because they made the most of the tiny square footage. The room is really tiny, but the story takes you back and forth from the “bar” to the “street,” and the smart decisions about how to do this and how to recreate a car or setting, for example, is really impressive. My note once again will be about inventory. Most items are in really bad shape. You may be in a secret mafia bar, but it feels more like a bar at the end of the universe somewhere around Harmanly (very small Bulgarian city)- dirty cups, plastic objects, broken and worn out. If I understand correctly a few days a week, there are live performances here, a type of interactive theatre on the subject. I understand that they are quite popular and I suppose the presence of actors contributes a lot to the experience, but the version we play seems … cheap.
The puzzles are average, nothing we’ve never seen before except the car puzzle; I still think the solution is truly innovative and creates a great atmosphere. The fact that we had to pretend to be mobsters when we talk on the phone, and that Dimitar is more of an Irish brawler than a high-class Italian criminal is obvious, we laugh a lot (Oi mate!). Hristo ended us with a bar of gold in his pants. It’s a long story, but we are not the people who leave things to chance.
I am amazed every time we are warned not to eat anything or drink anything in the room. In terms of …, how often do people drink unknown substances in escape rooms? The fact that we are constantly receiving such warnings disturbs me. I do not know if the teams are ready to do anything to escape or just think that there is free drinking, but there is no situation where I think it is permissible to absorb a substance in which someone obviously soaked their feet.
The Codex will remain in my mind as a fun room, but not more than that. However, I am pleasantly surprised by the fact that in all rooms in Romania you can pay by card, rooms in Bulgaria have to follow the example.
