For Queen and Country

Studio Escape (Osaka, Japan)

Time limit: 60 minutes

Age limit: None

Player limit: 2-4

Difficulty: Medium

Awards: TERPECA Nominee (2023-2024), Best of Morty 2023, Best Overall "In-person Escape Room" of the Year - Bullseye Award (2021)

Date visited: December 2024

Our second room at Studio Escape was the highly acclaimed and TERPECA-nominated For Queen and Country, the No. 1 rated Japanese game on Morty (as at the date of this review). With such high expectations, I was actually prepared to be a little disappointed, especially as  the 1960s British spy theme was not one I was particularly interested in. Well, I should never have doubted, because For Queen and Country might just be the best escape room I've played to date. It’s everything I could have hoped for, and more.

Like Studio Escape's Madame LeClaire and the Seance of Death, this room begins basically as soon as you enter the door and kicks off in an extremely cool way that plunges you right into the story. I’m not sure if the space is actually that big, but it certainly felt like a huge escape room, with multiple areas — including one that blew our minds with its design and execution.

In fact, the design of the entire game is impeccable, with a level of attention to detail I had never seen before. Every prop and piece of written material is custom made to perfection, with a cinematic aesthetic that permeates all of Studio Escape’s games. Even though we had a limited amount of time to escape, I often found myself reading all of the Easter eggs littered throughout the space, and laughing out loud at all the witty and clever jokes and references. It is not hyperbole to say this is the funniest escape room I’ve played thus far.

I loved the narrative-driven flow of the room, where every puzzle is directly part of the story and had to be tackled in a practical manner in order to progress the plot. And it’s a really good story too, with high stakes and a sense of urgency, but also a wacky sense of fun akin to an Austin Powers-type movie. While the puzzles weren’t overly difficult, they were challenging enough to make us nervous, especially when the kids wasted time by fighting over the tricky dexterity puzzles.

Lastly, I would be remiss to not mention the technology in this room, which, like Madame LeClaire, was super impressive and well-hidden, yet still managed to deliver jaw-dropping moments. With the owners being a comedian and a magician, it is no wonder that the room is full of laughs and magic. All of these elements — the design, the aesthetics, the props, the puzzles, the story, the humour, the tech — culminate in a sublime experience that I won’t forget any time soon. The only negative aspect was our gamemaster, who I believe forgot to replace a Japanese version of a prop with an English one (luckily, our Japanese was good enough to get through it), and likely messed up another section by not triggering the correct response to our inputs (we had to repeat it several times before we cleared it). But this was an isolated issue that didn’t dampen our overall enjoyment.

I can’t recommend this room, and all of Studio Escape’s rooms, highly enough.

Escape time: 55 minutes out of 60

Verdict: A knockout experience that captures the essence of the genre, era and location, with laugh-out-loud humour, mesmerising technology, and one memorable moment after another.

Rating: 9.75

Player	Theming	Atmosphere	Puzzles	Creativity	Fun	Average
H	10	9.5	8.5	10	10	9.6
E	10	10	10	10	10	10
Z	10	9.5	9.5	9.5	10	9.7
J	9.5	10	9.5	10	9.5	9.7
Rating						9.75