The game really clowns with you


Table of Contents

Location: Home

Date Played: May 2024

Team size: 1; recommended 1 - 3 players

Duration: 3 - 4 hours

Price: ~S$100 on their website

Premise

Circus of Mhodryak is an Escape box that mixes puzzles, narrative, and technology. It's stated to be approximately 4 hours long with each chapter taking about 1 hour each. The game was bought as part of a Kickstarter all-in bundle. 

In this experience, you receive a call for help by someone named Alan who lost his brother 20 years ago. You will investigate a mysterious circus that worships an ancient and unknown deity. You will focus on discovering the strange disappearances that have taken place there.

Components

The game comes in a cardboard box that personally feels unjustified for the price it commands. Inside the box contains a guidebook and 4 letters, each corresponding to 1 chapter. 

Each chapter generally contains a few documents as well as 1 or 2 trinkets. The contents in each chapter is relatively light for an hour and some of the items are gimmicks more than anything. Thankfully, the quality of the items are well made.

Gameplay

There's 4 chapters with each chapter slated for an hour each. Alongside the game you will use their website to provide you with the story and guide you through the puzzles. The website offers hints and the solution as well in case you get stuck on any of the puzzles.

Puzzles/Thoughts

➕ Decent components. I like the components' quality, they feel nice to touch and helps to add a bit immersion to it.

➖Some puzzles were okay. Although they've been seen in other escape room games, they were still enjoyable to solve them.

✖️Some puzzles felt unfair. The clues were quite obscure in some of the puzzles, making it difficult to figure out which approach was the right one.

✖️ Light on content. Although each chapter was approximated to be 1 hour, 2 of the 4 chapters that I played were completed in less than half an hour. Alongside the small amount of content in each chapter, it does not feel like I got my money's worth.

Verdict

It's difficult to recommend this especially at such a high price point. The content was lacking, the puzzles were convoluted at times and the whole box lacks quality.

I've heard that the other games from Key Enigma are better so I'm more optimistic with their other games.

Rating: 2/5

★★✩✩✩

You can buy their game here