Escaping Hallow Hills- an online escape room review

With Halloween lurking around the corner, me and my fellow dep found ourselves searching for something fun and spooky to do. Unfortunately, reality can be a bit of a heartbreaker and with most club tickets selling for way too much and cinemas being booked out, we decided to give an online escape room a shot. 

First of all, the game already comes with its inherent advantages. Unlike a real escape room, this one can be saved and picked up at a later time – handy if you realise you have reading due for tomorrow. It also means you can play with more than one person while paying the one set price rather than per person. 

Of course, it helps that the company was kind enough to send over a free game code, which already set the vibe. They sent over a leaflet describing the game, a postcard from one of the game’s characters, and a wooden, antique-looking key with the code attached. I’m pleased to say that this level of thoughtfulness and effort continued onto their site, where the games were easy to find and had great visual elements to give you a feel for each experience. Another interesting aspect was that there was a QR code for your team to scan which would allow them to see any items you found in the game, on their phone. Definitely well thought out as it would have been annoying to stop your puzzle and go back to the clues. 

Once we properly set the tone by turning the lights off and the candles on, we grabbed some paper and a pen and started the experience. 

The game started off as a series of texts between you and your friend. There were responses you could give, neither being a wrong answer. It was an interesting way of giving some backstory to the player quickly however I feel that it could have benefited from some more realistic responses, which would have added a more realistic touch and possibly some humour – after all if my friend texted me so late at night I’m not sure I’d be so engaged. After this, there was a cutscene of the player arriving to Hallows Hill, the centre and setting of this mystery. I think it’s worth noting that the visual elements were very clean and felt like a movie, making this feel like more than a point-and-click game. 

A fun alternative to the usual Halloween plans

The game has a 4 5  difficulty rating however I’m not sure if that’s accurate. Since the game states that it’s for 13-year-olds and older, I can see how the puzzles might be challenging for a younger audience however a lot of the puzzles were easy to solve. That’s not to say that some of them didn’t have us stumped – we did have to get the answer to two of them. With that, I wish the puzzles were all more difficult, maybe less so than the ones we faltered on. I think that would’ve made the game slightly more fun. 

The story itself was good, it felt like your classic mystery story. However, for a die-hard horror fan such as myself, I couldn’t help but feel that it was missing scary elements. While it is set in an abandoned, haunted house and centres around the story of a family that held seances for a living, it lacks anything scary beyond that. Again, this might be in order to make it more family-friendly, however, I think it would be a lot more fun and engaging if there was a version for 18+ that had more jumpscares and different effects as well as a more haunting storyline. 

Overall, the game took around 90 mins to complete and offered a fun alternative to the usual Halloween plans. I think I would play a Wolf escape game again if it caters to a more adult audience with extra scary elements and slightly more challenging puzzles. If you too are looking for last minute Halloween plans, I’d give this a go (the 20% off Halloween discount doesn’t hurt).