The Kingdom of Cats
The Kingdom of Cats
- Played July 2015
- Markham
- 60 minutes
- 3-8 players
- $27.95/Wkday, 29.95/Wkend (Facebook Discounts)
- Unlimited
- Omescape
- Unit 7 7501 Woodbine Ave Markham, ON
- (905) 695 9556
- What People Say
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The Kingdom of Cats is another excellent offering from Omescape. For those who have yet to visit them, Omescape are a class act through and through, from their facility to the rooms themselves. The waiting area is large and spacious with a sizeable area set aside for playing board games or just hanging out. There is a large selection of board games to choose from and plenty of tables and chairs on which to make yourself comfortable (note that there is an extra charge for the board games). Perfect for a night out where you want to do a few board games between your escape rooms (or a few escape rooms between your board games if you prefer). There’s also a small cafe specializing in bubble tea and frozen yoghurt.
The room itself exhibits the top-notch production quality we have come to expect from Omescape. Everything looks great, the puzzles are well integrated into the room, and there is a good use of tech, leading to a number of those special “wow” moments. The feline theme is used well, and adds a fun and whimsical air to the room, making a nice change from the umpteenth “you have been kidnapped and must escape your dark and scary cell” type of room. The puzzles themselves are varied, including a very unique type of puzzle I have yet to experience anywhere else. The last puzzle is a bit of a doozy, but otherwise the puzzles are challenging yet achievable and fair, without any leaps of logic or strained connections required. Overall a top-notch room and our team had an absolute blast playing through it. Highly recommended.
Final Verdict: | 9.4/10 |
I found the puzzles for this room forced players into a bottleneck of linearity. I would definitely limit the player size to 4 people.
WTF!?
How is this the highest rated game on your site. Are you also the owner of OmeEscape?
This was a run of the mill room. Our group was really disappointed because this is the highest rated game on this site, yet the game is so ordinary.
Cons: Pretty much everything is padlock based.
The story is nothing. It sounds fun, but it’s not interesting. It reminds me of a terrible RPG game for five year olds.
Pros: Some fun technical puzzles and interesting room layouts.
I have to disagree with KK’s comment above. Everyone who’s done this room thinks it is great. Whimsical is a perfect word for it. Strongly themed. And not particularly padlock based. By my count between a third and half of the puzzles were not padlock based, depending on how broad you definition of padlock is. Plus, padlock based should not be a con anyway as there’s little correlation between how fun a puzzle is and how you go about inputting your answer. Will everyone rate it in their top ten? Well no. But everyone will enjoy it. I would put in in my top 10 out of 30 or so rooms I have done. Do agree with VS that 3-4 players is sufficient.
Just so you know the Omescape location in Washington DC closed just after a year or so due abysmal reviews. The Kingdom of Cats was one of their rooms that received horrible reviews.
https://escapeadventurer.com/2017/09/
I agree with Vixay that the puzzle sequence in this room is quite linear (possibly entirely linear if I remember correctly.) I did it with 3 players and definitely found more than once, one individual was standing around, or hunting pointlessly for more clues.
I would also agree with Kiremoto that a score of 9.4 is way too high. There were a few puzzles I found particularly memorable and clever, but many were very simple (at least 2 of those very simple ones rely on a sufficiently novel device that they’ll likely still take you a fair bit of time and effort, despite their simple logic.) There was also one entirely pointless and time wasting bit of technology.
Not a criticism, but I would note that this game seems to have evolved over time. I’ve compared notes with two other groups that did it earlier than I did, and both mentioned features I didn’t see. One of these teams had done it only 2 weeks before I did, and between the time they played and I did, some technological feature was removed.
Personally, I feel a score higher than 8 ish needs to not be so linear. I do recommend this game, but it’s not a 9.4.
I’m looking forward to checking it out. It sounds fun!
I was thinking of doing it with about 8 people… too many? Let me know if you have done it and if that’s a good number!
I would say 8 is far too many. The puzzles are too linear to keep that many people engaged. For experienced puzzlers, no more than 2 or 3. At one stage, the physical space will be excessively small for too many people. If you’re newer at escape games, or are including some newer individuals, I think a maximum of 5.
thanks so much! i am definitely not a beginner in escape rooms so thats great to know. probably gonna do it with 3 or 4.
Omescape is located in Markham, just near the 404 Steeles exit. Omescape is a franchise from big cities like Beijing and San Francisco. We were invited to check out their facility which we were eager to visit since it was our first franchise review.