Questomatica: Wake Up!

Have you ever tried to rouse a sleeping child who doesn’t want to wake up? What about trying to wake them from INSIDE THEIR DREAM? Hope we don’t get stuck…

Questomatica

• Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands (15 minutes’ walk from Amsterdam Centraal station)
• Players: 2-5
• We played: February 2019 as a team of 5

Great things about Wake Up!

• In Wake Up!, Questomatica have endeavoured – successfully – to create a childlike dream-world setting. Space and props are used in intelligent and original ways to build a world that almost makes sense and yet doesn’t, and the game unfolds in unexpected directions according to its own surreal logic.
• The décor of Wake Up! doesn’t disappoint; the first room is a nice-looking and pretty convincing child’s bedroom (albeit with a couple of incongruous details that don’t spoil the overall theming).
• The room features a decent variety of tasks, and the last puzzle in particular was satisfying in scale and an enjoyable finale.
• This is a game that rewards the sharp-eyed. Being observant for small details and changes is essential to success.
• Although we played with the maximum recommended number of players, the room didn’t feel cramped. That said, with 5 players this game wasn’t especially difficult – we think that with 2 or 3 players this could be quite a challenging escape room.

On the other hand…

• This game had moments where it felt unnecessarily easy – at one point in particular, the full solution to a puzzle was provided in-game. While some signposting towards the way to proceed is usually helpful, in the case of this puzzle it left us nothing to work out.
• We inadvertently skipped a step in this room because of some relatively common general knowledge. This broke the linearity of this game, and meant that we ended up following a path to something we had already solved.

Who should try this room?

Wake Up! is suitable for any small group of friends or family, and would be a good first escape room. As it doesn’t use any verbal puzzles, you can enjoy it regardless of your language abilities.

Rating – 8/10