Hijinx Hotel

Review by Michael

The Hijinx Hotel might not fit everyone’s definition of escape room, but there’s surely an overlapping fan-base. Remember that the score out of ten is presented as the rating owed to it by fans of the room’s particular puzzle-type. For people who love Double-Dare-like physical challenges, the Hijinx Hotel would seem close to perfection.

The important thing about this place, from a critical standpoint, is that it does all and only what escape rooms usually can’t or won’t do: provide a meaningful physical challenge, nested in a narrative context so apt that each of the 10 “challenge rooms” is a master class in what game designers (reluctantly) call “ludo-narrativity” or ludo-narrative harmony (as opposed to ludo-narrative dissonance, the negative aesthetic effect of a mismatch between story premise and game mechanics).

For designers, it’s a masterclass in what, I suspect, most escape room finale experiences should involve.

Others are free to disagree, but the point is, as with all rooms of this rare “obstacle course” type (which we’ve color-coded yellow), the challenge is obvious, and there’s little to figure out, but much to do, and plenty of fun to be had. The thing to note is that while the physical challenges are funny, fun, and above all, clear, they are never presented without meaningful decor that suggests a specific story.

Shouldn’t we all be taking notes?
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75 O’Riordan St, Alexandria NSW 2015, Australia