We (just barely) completed “The Anomaly” at Puzzleworks today. This is the newest room they have — just opening up about a month ago. Yes we were here just yesterday to do The Dungeon. 😊

This newest room had some new dynamics.

  1. The room was divided into three segments with 20 minutes to complete each segment. If you finish the segment before that you get a time bonus. If you don’t have it finished in 20 minutes they clue you to the answer and move you to the next room. We finished the first room with a few minutes to spare. The 2nd and 3rd rooms we finished with just seconds left.
  2. Each of the rooms were puzzle heavy. There was only one single lock in the whole experience. The puzzles worked well to handle in parallel. We had five people but eight could easily be engaged.
  3. The experience was interactive with a computer. So as you completed things you put them into the computer and worked through a menu system. That was cool and worked well.
  4. Given the way the clock worked you don’t just get a time — you get a score based on how you did. We scored 63,550 which actually put us in 17th position on the top 20 leaderboard.

It was a little odd to us that the game didn’t have a final time since that is how all previous 67 rooms we’ve done have operated. We have done a couple of rooms with a point system, but it was always in addition to the clock. The puzzles were challenging and the experience worked extremely well. Definitely a great room and a fun, new experience. Room 68!