Defenders of the Triforce

WAfter a bit of a hassle with our actual passes (which was resolved after trying to reach the event organizers through every social media outlet) we made it into Hyrule! I’ve heard a lot about this game, both in its notoriety as well in what people were expecting it to be. If I had not done the Locked Library before this experience, I may have been expecting something else entirely. The gameplay is more adventure quest than escape. Everyone has a table they do their puzzles at and they venture to other areas of the expanse that’s been decorated to look like Zelda places accordingly. Using ‘Ocarina of Time’ as their game base (as well intro and ending videos and other promotional material) the areas were related to areas from the that specific game, most notably a Temple of Time. Staff members of the event were at each location dressed and acting accordingly as best they could. There’s a lot of logistical puzzles to solve in paper form, and you’d have to present your answers to the correct location or it’d reveal what you have to do at each location. Being a selected location for a traveling event like this, you’d figure everyone that did sign up for it (and pay the cost) would be a fairly avid Zelda fan, so all the little nods and elements were great to see. All the puzzles were on Zelda theme and was just an overall fun time (despite the rough morning we had). Now, given that it was held in a private event room, there’s not too much they could do for “immersion” considering it’s only a 2-day event and has several groups of 6-man teams all on the go at the same time. There were over a dozen different tables of teams all on the go, and while there was some bottle-necking, it wasn’t as extensive as the Library event. Of all the teams, we were the 5th, and last, to successful finish the quest with only five minutes left to go!


Going into this Zelda escape experience, I wasn’t really sure what we would be going through but they really delivered a fun escape room. The price was pretty steep for an escape room but for this one-time event I was okay paying for it. The beginning of our day was pretty stressful and hectic (We somehow were the only team to not be emailed out of the entire group…) which really tainted our experience but once we got ahold of the customer service team they really came through and helped our group out. The upgrade was a nice touch to the higher tier and we all came home with commemorative coins! The setup of the experience was neat – going into the event I was thinking it would be more setup like a D&D adventure and everything would just be paper puzzles but they had booths around the room setup as separate zones on the map they gave you. Each booth had an actor who gave you clues & chests to help you progress in saving Hyrule. Reading the review about a similar event I was worried about the backlog of groups and essentially losing your time due to waiting was a huge concern for me but we never really ran into that problem. All in all it was a neat event to attend and in the end we saved Hyrule and got the Master Sword.


Oh boy, getting to this room was an adventure in itself! We booked our tickets back in April so that we could get the early bird pricing, and in case it sold out. We arrived half an hour early as per the instructions on our tickets and no one was there. No staff, no other players, no one. Because we live in the future, there was no phone number to contact anyone, only a facebook, twitter and email. Everyone frantically started trying to contact Scrap to figure out what was going on. We told them in those emails that we were showing up to the next time slot so hopefully there is space for us. We finally heard back around noon, which was an hour before the next time slot, and apparently they had cancelled the 10 AM and 6 PM slots, and we were the only ones to not to be contacted about it – I’m thankful we had booked for the early game and not the late one because of this. Once we were able to finally get in contact with someone they let us know we will be playing in the 1 PM slot, and they bumped our tickets up to the gold package, and everything was smooth sailing from there.
As for the room, I didn’t have high expectations going into this room. I had heard that it was a little disappointing, and knowing that there were multiple teams going through at the same time, I expected bottlenecks where you need to turn in answers. The game also came with a hefty price tag of 50$ pp for just the game (normally 22$ to upgrade to get the poster and coin which we were complimentary upgraded to because of the mixup), and while I ended up being pleasantly surprised with the gameplay, it wasn’t quite worth the price. There were probably 16 or so tables with six seats at each, you were given a binder and that was your starting point, but from there, you had to bring your answers to different locations on the ‘map’ which were little booths around the room, all with ‘actors’ in them that you turned your clue into. While every once in awhile we got stuck behind a group finishing up at a booth, we never had to wait long. The binder itself had about 6 or so mini puzzles that we all had to figure out first and then from there each time we turned in an answer we got a new puzzle (sometimes in a chest) or clue to something we were already working on.
There was a surprising amount of physical puzzles (cutting a laminated sheet  – which felt sooo wrong, poking a hole in a chest, throwing pots!) in addition to paper puzzles (drawing, ‘crosswords’). All in all, what we needed to save Hyrule was with us the whole time, and we received the Master Sword before time ran out! 

 

Defenders of the Triforce
And peace fell over the land of Hyrule, thanks to us!
Puzzles75%
Room Quality67%
Immersion60%
Customer Service90%
Positives
  • Heavily themed puzzles
  • Lots of role playing
  • Out of box thinking
Negatives
  • Problems in registration
  • Can deter you if you're expecting an "escape room" experience
73%Score

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