Escape from the Blue Room

Real Escape Game Ikebukuro (Tokyo, Japan)

Time limit: 50 minutes game time (approx. 80 minutes including intro and debrief)

Age limit: None

Player limit: 2-6

Difficulty: Expert

Date visited: July 2026

After being amazed by Escape from the Red Room during a previous visit to Japan, we were very excited to hear that its sequel, Escape from the Blue Room, had finally landed at Scrap's new Ikebukuro location. And so after our long flight from Montreal to Tokyo, we got a good nights' rest and headed straight to Ikebukuro the next day! What better way to get over jet lag than another escape room?

• Like its predecessor, Blue Room is all about the puzzles. The room itself is deceptively plain and, fittingly, dominated by its eponymous colour. But theming and atmosphere is not what you play this game for. You play this game for the ingenious design and crazy puzzles. We've played some difficult escape rooms before, but these Japanese puzzle rooms are simply on a different level.

• The gameplay is simple. You are guided into a room painted almost-entirely in blue. There is no writing of any time, just universal numbers, symbols, and images. Your goal is to figure out what they mean and solve one puzzle after another until you escape, or time runs out after 50 minutes.

• If you love a challenge or simply love puzzles, you will likely love this room. Unable to rely on language, the game designers reached deep to deliver some crazy ideas and concepts. This goes way beyond simply "thinking outside the box" — your thinking needs to cover all the bases and keep evolving because the room itself keeps changing.

• I suppose some of the puzzles could be considered "traditional", but there are many practical brain teasers as well. It challenges your spatial awareness, depth perception, and visual perspective; you need to be daring and willing to try anything. Don't be shy — if it's not allowed, your GM will tell you.

• This was a very hands-on game that had us constantly moving things and running around as we tried various different things. Z, in an act of desperation, even took off his T-shirt at some point to help solve a puzzle (and it actually helped!). Accordingly, I would recommend at least 3 people, preferably more, simply because of amount of physical things you need to do, and the difficulty becomes exponentially higher when there's not enough hands to get it done expeditiously.

• One thing that should be mentioned is the almost-constant GM presence. Those who have played Red Room will know that the GM is standing in the corner the entire time, telling you what you're not allowed to do or dropping subtle hints if you are struggling. This is slightly better in Blue Room, as our GM occasionally ducked out and left us to ourselves, but she was there for the most part, telling us "No!" whenever we started frantically throwing around props to save time lol. So if you're uncomfortable with the GM being there watching over you, take note!

• Another thing to note is that the GM does not give you hints just because you want them to. They will gauge your progress, and if you really do get stuck for too long or are getting close to a solution but missing something specific, they might give you a nudge or tell you you're on the right or wrong track. But they will not keep feeding you hints simply because you're behind on time. If you fail, you fail.

• Blue Room is a single-play game that does not allow repeat playthroughs. As such, if you fail the room, your GM will go through the remaining puzzles with you using an answer booklet (which they have in English), even giving you an opportunity to figure them out for yourselves after a bit of hinting.

• We kept thinking we had solved the final puzzle, only to find out there were more and more. We failed on what was probably the third-last puzzle of the game. And to be honest, even if we had 10 more minutes I'm not sure we could have solved the insane final puzzle. I was shocked to learn the escape rate was around 14%, which is actually HIGHER than what I thought it would be, though I guess local players are probably more accustomed to this kind of wacky puzzle design.

• Usually failing an escape room can leave a sour aftertaste, but in this case all we could do was tip our caps and marvel at the ingenuity. Having just been wowed by Canadian escape rooms for their scale, scope, gorgeous sets, and immersive acting, it was cool to be wowed by an escape room purely for its puzzles.

• Did they push some of the puzzles too far into the abstract? Perhaps. I can definitely see some players who are not used to Japanese-style puzzle games disliking it because the culture actually intends for most players to fail. But as far as puzzles go, this is one of the best games we've ever played. Red Room was already amazing, but Blue Room took it up another significant notch. Can't wait for the next one in Scrap's colour series.

*A note about English playability. When we played in July 2026, the game was technically not playable in English so we had to book out the entire slot (as required to prevent being mixed with Japanese players), and we managed to get by with our shitty Japanese. In late August, full English support finally became available, including English pre-game briefing and post-game explanation materials, and I assume a translation machine. This means you no longer need to book out the entire slot and can just go with a public booking, but of course it means being prepared to play with random people.

Escape time: Failed!

Theming	Atmosphere	Puzzles	Creativity	Fun
B	B	A+	A+	A

Verdict: The long-awaited sequel to the brilliant Red Room was well worth the wait, offering an upgraded experience with a larger space and even crazier, ingenious puzzles. One of the best — if not the best — puzzle games we've ever played!

OVERALL RANK:

H	E	Z	J
A+	A	A	A