Misty Island - Elemental Gate [迷霧島 - 元素之門]

Rostart Games - Xinyi Flagship Store (Taipei, Taiwan)

Time limit: 80 minutes (for some reason our game time was 65 minutes)

Age limit: Under 12 requires adult

Player limit: Minimum 4 on weekdays, 6 on weekends

Difficulty: Hard

Date visited: April 2026

Misty Island [迷霧島] was an interesting multi-route game that's a little difficult to explain, but I'll try. It's actually 3 separate escape rooms with a shared common area in the middle. So if you want to play all 3 "routes", you will need to pay for it 3 separate times. What this design caters for is really large groups of up to 21 people, which you could split into 3 groups of 7 and all play simultaneously. It's flexible in that you could also do 2 routes simultaneously with 2 groups of 6, or as we did, one route with a single group of 4. Some groups even play all 3 routes back to back to back.

The three Misty Island "routes" are:

• Temple of All Things [萬物神殿] - shifting spaces, deadly traps

• Elemental Gate [元素之門] - interactive tech, hidden chambers

• Demi-human Trials [亞人試煉] - teamwork, full-body challenges

Given that we were with my elderly mother, we obviously chose Elemental Gate, the least physically strenuous of the three. We had high expectations heading into this one given the size of the build and the promise of high-tech mechanisms and effects, but did it live up to the hype?

• Misty Island - Elemental Gate certainly delivered in terms of scale, theming, and tech, but as with many hi-tech rooms, didn't achieve the kind of smooth game flow we had hoped for.

• The theming of the room was strong and really evoked Tomb Raider-style temple vibes, with ancient brick walls, statues, torches, and mechanical contraptions. It was impressive, but we've seen many fantastic and immersive floor-to-ceiling temple builds by now, so it did not wow us as much.

• There was quite a lot of lighting, sound, visual, and other special effects which added to the atmosphere, though they felt more like individual moments didn't quite all come together to form a cohesive sensory experience.

• We were given a paper notebook at the start, which gave us an idea of where we had to go and which part of Misty Island our route would take us. As explained earlier, there is a central common area that is shared amongst all three routes. We did not encounter any other teams during our game, but we could see a small part of the other routes (and they looked quite physically demanding!).

• Misty Island was marketed as Rostart's most challenging room, and it was definitely the hardest of their 3 games we've played to date. However, the extra difficulty often came from vague or insufficient signposting, unclear instructions, or an additional layer of misleading complexity on top of otherwise intuitive puzzles. This resulted in multiple attempts on most of the puzzles and a lot of guessing and checking, which definitely stunted the flow.

• A further element of frustration came from the finicky tech. There were no malfunctions, but some things just had to be done in very specific ways in order for the tech to trigger, and we had to liaise with our GM via walkie talkie on a few occasions to make sure we were on the right track.

• The game was advertised as 80 minutes, but for some reason I wrote down afterwards that we were only given 65 minutes to escape. Despite the various obstacles we encountered, including one part where my elderly mother really struggled to crawl through a hole, we ended up finishing the room right on the dot, with one or two hints in the final section as we were running out of time.

Escape time: 65 minutes out of 65

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

Verdict: A big, well-themed, and ambitious hi-tech room with an assortment of challenging but finicky puzzles. Fun overall but did not quite live up to its full potential.

OVERALL RANK:

H	Z	J
B	B+	B-

Note: The future of Rostart is up in the air as at the date of this post due to an unfortunate incident on May 10, 2026, in which a live actor playing a "hanging ghost" in their Yongchun Hospital [永春醫院] game passed away from accidental strangulation. Rostart is now "temporarily closed" pending an investigation and potential criminal and civil liabilities.