When I was a kid, my favorite board game was Cluedo
Last weekend I finally fulfilled this childhood fantasy at Mystery Manila, one of the three real-life room escape games in the metro. Also known as mystery rooms or live escape games, they give the players interactive scenarios in a locked-up room. The object of the game is to escape the room by solving all the puzzles and challenges in 60 minutes or less.
I was part of BDJ’s very first MVP Bella Meet (more on that in my next post) at Mystery Manila’s Century City Mall branch, where 15 of us were divided into three groups with a pre-assigned room. My group was tasked with Debby’s Doll, where our scenario was:
“You are a family that just moved into a house where strange things start to occur. You find out that these strange occurrences are caused by a spirit that is haunting an old doll you found in the house. Because of these paranormal events, you decide to move out of the house, but Debby prevents you from leaving.” There’s something very Annabelle about this story!
We checked our gadgets and personal belongings in a locker, and our gamemaster gave us last-minute tips and precautions before locking us up in our mystery room. I won’t give you any spoilers, but I will tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed every hair-raising scream that came out of my throat, every challenging puzzle and mystery we had to solve, and every freight element that filled our room.
Did we get out of the room in 60 minutes? Almost! We had one lock left to pick, but the buzzer signaled that our game was over and Debby had taken our souls for all eternity. Drat!
My group, which we named Bella Dolls, posed with the “Almost Solved!” sign as we watched other groups celebrating their “Mystery Solved!” Hey, at least we didn’t end up with “Mystery Fail!”
But I’ll be back with a vengeance. I’m planning to take my loved ones to “Rebecca’s Room,” which is I hear is one of the most frightful and challenging paranormal rooms in Mystery Manila.
February 9, 2016