
If there’s one genre that I’ve really resonated with in VR, it’s the virtual escape room. On flat consoles they’re fine, but they lack a certain ‘wow’ factor that stop me from really caring all that much when a new one released. On the Quest though, I’m all for them. There may be quite a lot, making it hard for a new one to really stand out, but I love trying them regardless!
Exit Condition One Escape Room is the latest virtual escape room to make its way in virtual reality – let’s see how it fares.
Many thanks to the publisher for the review code.
ON ONE CONDITION
As you awaken from cryosleep, a robot informs you that the facility is suffering from a system malfunction and that you – as the creator – will need to help rectify the situation and get out of there. It’s a rather serviceable setup, but it does a good job at linking the different escape room situations by form of a rudimentary narrative. There may not be a whole lot to it, but it’s enough to tie everything together – especially as your chatty robot companion is both friendly and helpful.
Set over eight stages (including the introduction), your ultimate goal is to find a way to unlock the door to the room you are in. What sets the game apart from other games in the genre is that each stage is designed to be played with free roomscale movement. Requiring only a modest 2×3 metres, it hopes to allow as many people as possible to experience it as intended. To work around these limitations, the game will often have ways to transition to other areas via a form of ‘warping’, or will simply stack them vertically to help allow for more space. It works quite well, even if my own available space made was barely sufficient to play it that way. Thankfully I could utilise in-game tools, such as hammers, to help me hit any switches that were just out of reach! For those who can’t play in roomscale, analogue movement is supported too to ensure that the game is still playable regardless.
Despite the game having a fixed setting, there’s a surprising amount of variety to the locations on offer. There are, of course, several factory style settings that have you manipulating wiring, but there are some neat variations too to help mix things up. Of particular note is a ‘human museum’ that starts off looking like a regular office. However, the more you work through it, the more things start to fall apart, and – before you know it – you’ll see everything going on behind the scenes as you work towards activating the manual override.
Even though the locations and setup themselves are quite impressive, the game isn’t without its flaws. There’s a certain level of clunkiness to many of the items, making some of the puzzles a bit more fiddly than they ought to be. This is most notable with your wrist computer that is used for both conversations with your robotic companion and to gain advice, which is an essential tool yet never seems to work properly. I often found it would activate when facing my wrist away, making it impossible to read – and then not work when pointing my wrist in the correct orientation. The detection just doesn’t seem to work properly, making it something I never wanted to use.
The puzzles themselves are mostly solid, although I have to admit that they’re not quite as ingenious as other games in the genre. I found that many of the repeating puzzles, such as rotating dials to form a straight line or to connect electrical currents, just didn’t seem to be very satisfying. There are some, such as the drone controlling, that I enjoyed – but many seemed either overly simplistic or made to be more difficult in unsatisfying ways. Too many times I solved harder challenges by accident just while trying to figure out what to do.
The game definitely offers a cute indie take on the escape room idea, and the roomscale element certainly makes it feel rather unique; however, with so many great escape room games in VR that offer head-scratching challenges, the puzzles here just don’t seem to hold up as well. Still, if you’ve already experienced all those other games, then this isn’t a bad choice to scratch that escape room itch.
VERDICT
Even though there are other escape room games that offer far more enjoyable puzzles, having a flowing narrative and reasonable roomscale requirements helps to make Exit Condition One worth trying out for enthusiasts – just don’t expect to be challenged all that much.
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