No longer in operation.
We had a run at Ninja Escape located at Puchong Bandar Puteri a few months ago. We scored a great offer at Groupon at a special price. They have 4 rooms in total, and we manage to run all of them at the same day! We played the games when they have just opened for a month or so, so many of the games still need improvements pending feedback from customers. The bosses (will refer them as Ninja bosses hiks đ ) are friendly and they are willing to share with us all their thoughts and design ideas after the run. At the same time, they were also happy with getting feedbacks from gamers.
Each room was created by separate designer (the Ninja bosses), and each of them has a different strength with it. The same character permeates all 4 games: ninja (was told that it’s supposed to be Naruto-inspired), but the games lacked narratives. The easiest room they made is Ninja Exam (which had the greatest Naruto reference); we managed to escape within 30 mins. It may be a simple, fuss-free room for escape beginners to start of with, but some of the puzzle tools may not be friendly to the general audience. The hardest game according to the bosses would be the Crutial Countdown. It is nearly impossible to escape, unless you are really good in helping each other out, or you have many great puzzle solvers that could work quickly under stress in your team. Logic/matching puzzles are abundant in this room, given enough time (like more than 1 hour or 4), one shouldn’t have trouble seeing it through. Some electrical devices found in this room did make it more interesting compared to others.
The Ninja Ghost room uses a number of jumpscare tactics. So, be prepared. However, this room was still in the making. We like the huge space in this room, because there is more space for us to sit down, feel comfortable, gather info and discuss together. We also think that the huge space could be utilized in a more meaningful way that will add value to the game. Decor was still lacking to create a truely ghostly ambience. Hopefully by now the Ninja bosses have already fixed up the game (maybe using some of our ideas hehe..). For the Ninja Slaughter room, the most important tips for the would-be player is: just think out of the box. Because it does not have any logic on a few of the puzzles in this room, or not the kind that we can work out. Thanks to me, the lucky one, we whizzed by some locks without knowing how I did it.
Aside from the rooms, we like the idea of the Ninja Escape Challenge. If you could escape without using any clues or asking for help within 45 mins, the game will be free for the entire team if you took up this challenge. If you failed, or had to use any help in the game, you just have to pay them at normal rate. Well, we can’t take the challenge because we are using the Groupon package! The other thing worth highlighting would be ‘escape games for dummies’ instruction manual! (Ok, we used them, too.) This manual is the answer for everything, with step-by-step guide to the puzzles, which is probably extremely useful for a new escape gamer. However, with this guide we still failed at Crucial Countdown đ . On the flip side, the dummies manual could spoil the fun for the expert escape gamer, who enjoys cracking every puzzle at its own strength. So, do request them to remove the manual if you really want to be on your own.
Overall, game wise, there may be less hits than misses. The facility can do more prepping up with appropriate props/tools to create the right ambience for each of the games, especially given the huge space they have. We do think that the Ninja bosses are friendly and we can see how eager they are to improve their games. Hopefully, by now, they have upgraded their rooms, and will create better games in the future.
Featured image taken from the Ninja’s Facebook site.