Escape from the Lockdown: The Strange Village

The Strange Village is an online escape game that you can play at home. The game plays out on what is essentially a large sheet of paper online, but it also includes a series of videos. The videos were a nice, immersive touch, and had a good Werewolf myth quality to them. The puzzles themselves range from word puzzles to hidden message riddles. So I wasn’t too impressed with them, but it’s understandable why these puzzles are the way they are, considering they’re all essentially presented on a piece of paper. My favorite part is the story, which I won’t elaborate much on, but it has a good message and it was especially meaningful when I played it during the pandemic.

I found this to be an interesting premise, but the execution left me wanting something more. More immersive? More entertaining? I’m not quite sure. While I understand that the experience is a virtual adaptation of things meant to be done in-person with paper and pencil, among other analog physical puzzles, I had higher expectations for what video clips would bring to the table. It felt more tedious than engaging to play through all the video clips to understand different characters and their quirks. (I will say that language barrier may have contributed to this, as there is a lot of fatigue that comes with replaying dozens of clips and looking for clues while having to read subtitles that may be translated in a way that doesn’t quite set up the proper nuances). Overall, my friend and I found it to be onerous and had to take several breaks between rounds of videos in order to take a step back, refresh, and reset our headspace.