Message in the bottle (Game duration 60 minutes)
Fury team: Hristo Tomov, Stanislav Milev, Konstantin Bakalov, Juliyan Valchev and Nadezhda Danabasheva
Date: July 16, 2019
Our time: 58:00 minutes
We hadn’t planned this room, nor did we have much time to think about it 🙂 In the middle of a business trip to Munich with colleagues, we found ourselves with an extra hour and a half and decided to try to play something quickly. “Message in the Bottle” at Hunt4hint was the room that responded lightning-fast and allowed us to make a reservation literally within an hour. For reference, other rooms in Munich responded to me after a day or two or … never.
I had never met a German geek. We were greeted by a super friendly, long-haired, blond gentleman; I could immediately tell we were of the same blood. He asked us how we found them, told us how they created the rooms, shared what and how they played, and provided information about the escape room scene in Munich. He was incredibly kind and thorough.
After locking our belongings, we entered the room. We found ourselves on a pirate ship, with the task, of course, to discover a long-lost treasure. I’ve played several pirate-themed rooms, and the one we played at Offline continues to be on top of Fury’s rankings (well, Cursed Willy in Athens wasn’t bad either).
“Message in the Bottle” is a classic first-generation room; almost everything is mechanical (as it should be on a pirate ship). There are puzzles with water, there’s a puzzle with a ball, there’s a puzzle with a light. There’s one super cool puzzle that Konstantine took over after I couldn’t solve it. The concept is to tie a specific maritime knot, which is cool. The problem is that the hint for this puzzle is hung high in the room and is practically impossible to examine well; Konstantin, being the tallest among us, obviously had an advantage. In the end, we received a laminated sheet with all the knots; they slid it under the door. We tied the knot in seconds 🙂
Everything goes relatively smoothly; the guys solve almost all the puzzles, and I mainly observe. At around 45-50 minutes into the game, I slowly begin to realize that we have solved several puzzles, but they are connected into one final puzzle. And this one is terribly boring. And slow. And requires a lot of yelling between several positions in different rooms. And faded colors in dark spaces. And descriptions of shapes. The solution, after a 10-minute struggle, gives us the location of the key. Even when you know the location (which you have access to at any time, and we’ve looked at it at least 12 times), you still need a hint on what to do. Example: the answer to the puzzle is the text “the key is in the book.” There are 300 books in the room, and without being told specifically that you are interested in the sixth book on the second row from the left, you won’t find the key. And this is the final puzzle of the room, the grand finale, after which you find the treasure. Oh yes, it’s made up of plastic piggy banks for pennies, imitations of golden nuggets. There were such in one of the rooms in Romania. Cheap stuff.
I had fun, but not because of the room, but because of the company. More and more, my opinion is solidifying that escape rooms in Bulgaria are at least one level ahead.
Now, the good part. Despite the slight disappointment, I want to say that our hosts are awesome. Hristo has an annoying habit of forgetting his sweater or his umbrella, and this time, it was no different. These lovely people not only wrote to us that we forgot it, not only wanted to bring it to us, but in the end, they sent it to us via DHL. At their expense. This means that my next trip to Munich will include a visit to Hunt4hint to play in their other room. Because sometimes, to have a satisfied customer, all you need is a moderately good room, wonderful company, and excellent service.
Thank you for that; they get 5⭐ on TripAdvisor 🙂
