Exit Strategy Liverpool – Nostromo
Venue: Exit Strategy Liverpool
Room: Nostromo
The Team: TDM, Mr Carrot
Date: 28/07/2018
This was our second and sadly last visit to Exit Strategy as we’d previously played their other room, The Illuminati, so with Nostromo we’d run out of their rooms to play.
The Story:
NOSTROMO…
In Nostromo, you enter an abandoned spacecraft. We suspect that the Reptilians have killed the crew, disabled the critical systems on the craft set it on a course to crash to Earth and fled. In one hour the craft will enter the Earth’s gravitational field, the point of no return. You must convince the onboard computer HAL to change course… but how?
As on our previous visit we were offered complimentary drinks when we arrived which we were allowed to take into the room with us, not that we planned to have time to stop for refreshments once we’d started!
Before visiting I’d read a few reviews which seemed really positive and made clear the fact that Nostromo was a little different to most rooms in that it doesn’t feature any padlocks. That’s not to say there aren’t a couple of keys involved or that you don’t have to work out numbers like you would for combination or normal padlocks… but actual padlocks? A big no!
The decor of the room fitted the theme of an abandoned spacecraft very well, but more in a Red Dwarf style than Star Trek though. Painted in what I would imagine to be the dark grey of a storage hold and with a large retro style display screen it made an immediate good impression.
The room is designed is such a way that you need to keep returning to a central control area after completing each puzzle or task in order to progress. This works well as it also gives you a good idea about how far through the room you are at any given time.
The puzzles themselves were varied and creative with some really nice uses of tech along the way, some of which we’d not encountered before and had obviously been created as custom things for the room.
We did struggle a little on the last part as we were examining and re-examing some quite obvious bits and had missed something quite subtle in the same area. A clue (which came through as the ship’s computer voice) made us focus a little more in the right direction though and we soon had it sussed and made our escape.
This is a great room which reminded me a lot of Armageddon at GamEscape Liverpool (which has now sadly gone) in both it’s style and execution.
I imagine the booking system of having to arrange your booking by phone/text still remains a small barrier for some when it’s easier to book online at other venues, but Exit Strategy is well worth the extra effort for a visit.
