Tokyo Mystery Circus (Tokyo, Japan)
Time limit: 50 minutes
Age limit: None
Player limit: 2-4
Difficulty: Expert
Date visited: January 2025
SCRAP’s Escape from the Witch’s House in the Woods employs an interesting concept and business model called “Nine Rooms”, in which teams of 2-4 must tackle a range of puzzles across 9 connecting rooms consecutively, one after the one, in under 50 minutes. The final room has a limit of 10 minutes, regardless of how much time you still have left after completing the initial 8 rooms. Given that there are 9 separate rooms, one group can enter immediately after the other, but you cannot progress to the next room until the group before you has moved on (your timer will pause), meaning it’s not unusual to have to wait, and it can even stretch out your 50-minute experience to 90 minutes or more. If you run out of time, you can pay an extra 1,000 yen per person for an additional 10 minutes, unless you are already in the final room, where time extensions are not possible.
Playable in English, the game relies primarily on an electronic tablet that tells you what puzzles you need to solve, and is also where you key in your solutions to the puzzles. The tablet also tells you when you can move on to the next room, and also provides hints at fixed intervals if you take too long. You can access a hint earlier, but your timer will be automatically reduced accordingly. Hints are available for every room except the last one. If you fail, they offer you a “replay” ticket, which allows you to pay 1,000 yen per person for another crack at the final room, this time with hints available.
So as you can see, the Nine Room model comes across as a bit of a cash grab. This is because the first 8 rooms are already quite tricky and have elements that will arbitrarily take up a certain amount of time (whether in terms of reading on the tablet, or playable sounds or videos), and the final room has an epic number of steps to complete, making it quite difficult to beat without paying for the time extension and/or final room replay.
But what about the experience itself? Personally, I found it to be a mixed bag. I do like the Nine Room concept a lot. One of my favourite things about an escape room is discovering that there is another completely different section beyond the door, and Escape from the Witch’s House in the Woods offers this excitement many times over. Mathematically speaking, you have 5 minutes to clear each of the first 8 rooms and 10 minutes for the final room, making it a very fast-paced experience that can be both nerve-wracking and thrilling. Having 9 separate rooms also allows for a wide assortment of props and puzzles, whichWitch’s House takes full advantage of while remaining true to the fantastical theme. A clever thing the game does is making you reset the room — often in the form of a final puzzle or requirement — for the next group before you can advance.
On the other hand, as Tokyo Mystery Circus rolls out new rooms on a regular basis, these Nine Room games are not permanent. They feel more like pop-ups, with the various spaces created by partitions. While the theming and quality of the props are actually quite good (all things considered), the walls do not go all the way to the ceilings, allowing you see some wiring and hear ambient noises. The sound proofing is better than expected, but there were times when it was so loud that we struggled to hear the sound-based puzzles, which I’m not a fan of in any case. The use of the tablet can also get somewhat tedious, as you need to read it for every puzzle, every hint, and for inputting every answer. And lastly, you do need to rely on the previous group resetting the room properly. If they accidentally put something in the wrong place or take it with them, it can screw things up for you.
Fortunately for us, our experience in Witch’s House went rather smoothly after an initial misunderstanding that made us spend over 10 minutes in the first room alone! We had to make up for a lot of time after that, but the positive aspect of being behind meant that we seldom had to wait for the group in front of us in order to advance. We tore through the latter rooms but had only around 7 or 8 minutes for the final room, which we almost completed (we were one piece short). However, we decided against paying extra to redo the final room again, as we felt it was not worth the money.
Personally, I preferred Witch’s House over the next Nine Room we did, Escape from The Runaway Train, as did Z, who especially liked the four magic wands we had to carry with us and use to solve certain puzzles. J, on the other hand, liked Runaway Train more because he felt it had better props and logic puzzles. Either way, it’s a flawed game that offers a different kind of experience to traditional escape rooms but is worth trying if you happen to be in Tokyo.
Escape time: Failed!
Verdict: A mixed bag of an experience that has plenty of potential for fun and excitement but also frustration and tedium.
Rating: 8.167
Player | Theming | Atmosphere | Puzzles | Creativity | Fun | Average |
H | 8 | 7 | 8 | 8 | 7.5 | 7.7 |
Z | 8 | 8.5 | 8 | 8.5 | 8.5 | 8.3 |
J | 9 | 8.5 | 8 | 9 | 8 | 8.5 |
Rating | 8.167 |
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