Of all the things that I spend my money even if I don't need it, the one that makes me happier is escape rooms. Getting with my friends through a puzzle hour, finding keys, solving enigmas, laughing a lot... There isn't a lot of them near me, but I'm always down for play a new one when I can. For years, all the contact I had with this style of game were those point-and-click games made in Flash: they were cool, but isn't the same.

And I'm not even talking about the obvious difference: physical escape rooms are way cooler because they are real life, of course, but there's some design problems in most virtual ones to me. Digital escape rooms aren't bound by real physics, so everything can happen — and I end up finding puzzles and contraptions that doesn't make any sense, using trial and error to just understand how to operate them.

Nonetheless, in recent years, new digital games are being released trying to create virtual escape room experiences that brings more of the real life rooms' design philosophy. Escape From Mystwood Mansion isn't the best out there, but it's a really cool, well-made and recommendable game if you want to learn what is a real escape room (or if you miss going to one).

There isn't a lot going on for the plot here: you are a delivery person that is trapped inside a strange mansion full of puzzles. Some cues of a hidden story are here and there, and you even have a secret ending to discover, but don't create expectations about it. All you need to know (and expect) is five original escape rooms, themed around big house's chambers, like a wine cellar or a winter garden.

I'm trying to talk about Escape From Mystwood Mansion without giving much spoilers, but the puzzle design is the greatest achievement of the game. Some of the challenges would not be practical in a real life room (that needs to be reset every hour), but I can see every contraption being implemented in a physical escape room with few adaptations. Most of them is focused on finding patterns and getting codes (THE escape room default pattern), but they are well-made and fun to decipher. I recommend having pen and paper to take notes during the gameplay, though.

The hint system is also functional and easy to access, without penalties during the game or any annoying cooldown to get a new one. I didn't got stuck a lot, so the hints were enough me to progress in the game without being frustrated. Escape From Mystwood Mansion, though, is really language dependent (in the puzzles and hints), so, if your English is not very good, you might end up getting way more stuck trying to translate everything. (Or can be a new layer of challenge too!)

As a video game per se, there aren't remarking features to be talked about. The game looks OK, not incredible, but does the job even on low visual quality. The soundtrack is also just noise to solving the puzzles, so you can go with a podcast if you like. The most intriguing fact for me was the absence of an inventory to keep items, like every other game in the genre. It was cool, though, to use the floor as a way to organize the objects, similar to what I would probably do in the real life... but dragging items one of a time through the room was really boring. A container-type item or a multiple selection option would solve this.

It isn't the best out there, but Escape From Mystwood Mansion does an amazing job to bring the magic of real life escape rooms to a virtual space — and learning that it was the debut game of a two-person team makes it even more impressive. There isn't multiplayer options, but the game is so straightforward that you can just share your screen with some friends and have a lot of fun. I paid way more to way, way worse rooms in my life, and this pass to the Mystwood Mansion is a really good deal to escape room fans and first-timers.