Chernobyl (Game duration 60 minutes)
Fury team: Alexandra Petrova, Stanislav Fingarov, Ivan Vladimirov and Nadezhda Danabasheva
Date: May 24, 2024
Fury team time: 50:00 minutes
Lockpickers is mostly known for their horror games, and if you’re in Belgrade looking for a scary experience, you’ll probably come across their name. As for us—well, I famously don’t like horror rooms (in this team, it’s mostly me who avoids them), so we only planned to play Chernobyl, knowing there would be no live actors involved.
The room stays true to its theme as much as possible: a nuclear reactor interface, old Russian communication devices, and of course, a massive СССР flag hanging on the wall. As someone who remembers the day the Chernobyl disaster happened—and whose uncle was one of the Ukrainians sent to help clean up—I carry a deeply personal connection to this story. I even remember the year after, when we didn’t eat salad for months.
That personal history probably affected how I experienced the room. Through my lens, the game felt a bit childish and gimmicky. But then again, if we judged all escape rooms strictly on realism, the whole industry would become pretty bleak—and possibly quite boring.
The puzzles were numerous enough to keep us busy for an hour. Were they fun? I don’t think the game meant to be fun. It reminded me a bit of S11 in Barcelona: even though you escape, a quiet sadness stays with you afterward.
Technically, the game could use maintenance. Some interfaces didn’t respond well, and a few puzzle modules were clearly cut off from the gameplay because they no longer worked.
Final Thoughts: Chernobyl is an experience more than a game. It walks the line between fiction and historical memory. Not particularly joyful, and maybe not meant to be—but for the right team, it could still leave a mark.
