La Pièce: Le Grenier de la Pièce

“The famous twentieth century explorer Claudine Blanchet traveled all over the world, bringing back from her expeditions the most incredible treasures.
It is said that they are hidden in an old attic…
But beware, the disturbing objects brought back from her travels are, as it seems, so precious that some people think they are cursed…
Are you ready to take the risk?”

Game experience: ENTERTAINING
Immersion		Puzzles		Hosting
La Pièce opened this room especially to be playable by two people, although you can play in a team of up to four people (I would say three is a maximum for a comfortable game though). As a consequence, the space is not large, but the designers made a good use of it. Some light and sounds effect really make you feel this place is alive! Despite this, the game is not that scary – just slightly spooky. The space is also organized like a real attic, in which you have to find, among the multiplicity of objects, which ones are useful and which are not. The challenge with such a design is always to avoid red herrings, and the designers mostly succeeded doing so, except for one element. One puzzle was a bit misleading in my opinion, and there was not enough light to distinguish well colours. Note also that some special visual and sounds effects are manually activated: on one hand, this adds some old-school charm to the place; but on the other hand, they did not always trigger exactly when they were supposed to. In a nutshell, this very recent room has a lot of potential, but it needs a bit more polishing before it can reach this potential to its fullest!

Immersion
The sound and light effects that contribute to instill an eerie, though not scary, atmosphere. The artisanal aspect of the room – special mentions for the clue-delivering device, and a special effect that happens every time you solve a major step! You stay the whole game in one room, but in a way, you will travel across space and time…

Puzzles

An originally designed room in which you have to understand what is relevant and what is not. At least one useless red herring. Some colours that are essential for a puzzle are very difficult to see. I found one of the puzzles a bit misleading and frustrating, and I’m a bit concerned it might get accidentally broken by a team in the future. A fun manipulation at some point. The game structure is very sequential.

Hosting
Some mechanisms did not trigger exactly how and when they were supposed to. An interesting debriefing, during which we could see the backstage.

Performance: Our team of three experienced players technically lost, exiting 1 minute after the hour (15 minutes of which we spent on the disconcerting puzzle). Whether it’s a win or a loss, I like when I can play an escape game for a full hour, so this was actually a perk of our experience!

Difficulty: This room is described as beginner/intermediate, and in itself the puzzles are not that hard indeed, if you manage to understand their logic.

At the same venue: This venue hosts Once Upon a Room, set in the office of Lewis Carroll, one of the earliest escape games in Paris, which has been renovated and improved several times since its opening. They also host La Pièce Odyssey, a room inspired by 2001, Space Odyssey, which is among my favorite escape games in Paris!

Elsewhere in the Escape Galaxy: Coincidentally, we played this game the same day as another haunted-themed game in Paris, namely Room 113, which is organized in a very different way (read the review here).

In French: Read the review of this game in French by Virginie from experienceimmersive.fr here.

Want to play this game? Book here.

Game tested in August 2020 (Image and introduction text: La Pièce)