Go On Some Thrilling Adventures with ‘Agent Venture’ (Review)

The Adventure Is Real’s audio-based escape games provide smiles and surprises

We’re gonna need a team. The best of the best.

Because this mission? It’s a tough one.

So I’m thinking we’re gonna need: a savvy navigator who can guide our agent through sewers and elevator shafts and air vents; a top-notch hacker who can crack codes and break through security barriers; a lightning-quick researcher who can sift through documents to find clues; and a communicator who can socially engineer their way behind closed doors. And, lastly, someone to oversee and organize all of our teammates and keep the flow of information going. Luckily, I’ve got just the crew for the job and we’re all assembled right here on Zoom, waiting to make contact with our agent.

You see, me and my team of four other experts have been assigned to the “Centralised Tactics, Reconnaissance, and Logistics Team,” aka “CTRL” for short, to support the agency’s top field specialist, Agent Venture.

And Agent Venture needs our help on a top secret mission, right now.

(Minor spoilers follow.)

The scenario is the premise behind The Adventure Is Real’s series of audio-driven escape games, all falling under the umbrella of their Agent Venture franchise. The games require precisely four or five participants, each one being assigned a distinct and separate role: Navigator, Hacker, Research, and Communicator, with Coordinator being an optional role for teams consisting of five people. The three Agent Venture episodes — The Heist, Cyborg Island, and B.A.D. Side of the Moon — are all set in the same storyworld but you don’t necessarily have to play them all in order. And while the majority of the gameplay happens over Zoom, you never actually see your field agent’s face. Luckily, you’re able to hear and communicate with Venture through the magic of Zoom as they take on the evil forces of the B.A.D. Corporation and their CEO, J. Bozo.

Plus you’re able to speak with other characters in the world by using the chat function in the Zoom session to “dial their extension.” Simply type “+XXX” to be connected to a variety of delightful folks remotely, ranging from a bored human resources representative to a mad scientist who loves Mexican wrestlers to a much-maligned fictional being from an epic fantasy series by J.R.R. Tolkien. All of these characters are cunningly played by the same actor throughout the course of the game and the live, improvisational nature of the role allows the performer to lean into whatever wackiness the team comes up with. Plus: the experience has puns galore. My personal favorite was realizing that we needed to open up a shipping crate full of instruments to help our dear agent. What kind of instruments are in the crate? Lutes, to be exact.

What’s that? A loot crate?

Touché, Agent Venture. Touché.

Each player also receives an information packet that is unique to their role which may contain a series of images, PDFs, custom web sites, and/or Google documents. And teamwork is key to solving the puzzles here. For example: the Researcher may find a clue which helps the Hacker solve a puzzle to provide an escape for Venture, but Venture now needs the Navigator to tell them where to go. And our poor agent may not be able to get past a barrier, at least, not without the Communicator faking an emergency elsewhere in the facility or providing some other distraction. Imagine a little bit of Ocean’s 11 with Sneakers and you get the gist.

The Agent Venture experience has multiple strong points for escape room enthusiasts: a high pressure situation combined with a frenetic pace; asking players to find disparate pieces of information and summarize them to each other on the fly; asymmetrical document distribution among the team; strong use of humor; clear roles for each team member so everyone knows what they’re “supposed” to be doing; and an eagerness to break the rules of reality to suit the game and plot when necessary thanks to the use of the live actor. These characteristics feel unique to a digitally-native escape room and make Agent Venture stand out among the online escape game crowd.

However, taken together, these aspects can also make it tricky for less experienced escape room fans to find their rhythm and feel like they’re part of a cohesive team. Said NoPro NYC writer Edward Mylechreest, “I could hear what you guys were doing, but, as I couldn’t see any of it, and I was preoccupied with my own screens, I didn’t feel like I was really on the journey with everyone else.” LA correspondent Laura Hess concurred, noting that, “As a highly visual person, I found it challenging to be in a ‘verbal’ escape room.”

Therefore, if this all sounds like it might be your bag, I strongly recommend forming a team of five players, rather than the minimum of four. With a fifth person on the team, their role becomes that of the Coordinator: they have access to all of the documents that the Hacker, Communicator, Researcher, and Navigator have separately. And with the right Coordinator guiding the team and narrating decisions and solutions as the action unfolds, you can drastically improve the overall team’s experience and ability to communicate. For example, one of my Coordinators frequently reminded the group to take advantage of Zoom’s screen share function, as others will often forget about this feature in the heat of the moment, particularly if they’re in the throes of solving a complex puzzle.

But, again, the Coordinator role isn’t suited for anyone, particularly those who become overwhelmed with a sea of documents and web sites that are dumped into their laps at the beginning of the experience which can feel like a bit of a “sink or swim” exercise; “I totally had no idea where to start,” admitted NoPro writer Allie Marotta. Personally, I loved being the Communicator (a role which uses a lot of improvisational acting skills and is helped by having an arsenal of terrible accents) or the Researcher (a role which tests just how quickly you can read and piece together information and tell your teammates what you’ve uncovered).

All that said, Agent Venture is a blast for more experienced escape game players in the right mindset; it’s also crucial to cast each person into roles well-suited for them. Additionally, given the number of narrative branches and modularity of the puzzles, it is possible to play each of the three episodes multiple times with different roles and different choices and see entirely new content. I’m impressed that Agent Venture has successfully cracked one of the hardest problems in escape rooms: replayability. That, combined with the way that the live actor is integral to the Agent Venture experience, makes Agent Venture a must-play for any remote escape room fan.

This is your Communicator, signing off for now. Over and out.

Agent Venture: The Heist, Cyborg Island, and B.A.D. Side of the Moon are ongoing experiences; tickets are £12–14 per person for teams of 4–5 people.

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