History Repeats Itself in ‘Pursuit of the Assassin Artist’ (The NoPro Review)
OMESCAPE reinvents what escape rooms can be with their time loop-ed remote game
A deadly assassin has been plaguing the city of Sunnyvale, California. However, detectives now have their first lead in the case and have found a piece of evidence that could lead them to the killer… and, surprise, it’s a world-renowned artist in their community!
And only you can help track down the suspect.
Pursuit of the Assassin Artist by OMESCAPE is a remote escape game played over Zoom supplemented by a web-based inventory system. In this avatar-driven room, your player character, Agent Wolf, must take down the world famous artist, Nissassa, who has been secretly going on murderous sprees in Sunnyvale. What makes Assassin Artist different is that both your player character and their nemesis are played by live actors inside a physical set. The team of players also has access to 360 photographic panoramas of the set in order to examine the environment through a separate web interface and you can ask Agent Wolf to more closely examine objects by describing them verbally or by holding them up to the camera.
The experience is viewable to the players via webcam using Zoom but the team observes the action primarily from Agent Wolf’s point of view (who uses a body-mounted camera). So through “their” eyes, you, the players, can guide your secret agent through solving lightly-themed art-based puzzles and bluffing their way into gaining Nissassa’s trust. Luckily, Nissassa can’t hear you helping Wolf over Zoom and, so, Wolf is able to improvise their way through various situations based upon the information you’re feeding them in real time.
(Minor spoilers follow.)
But, wait, there’s more. There’s a big, fascinating twist present Pursuit of the Assassin Artist (one that you essentially find out about right away). If your avatar fails in their attempts to foil Nissassa, and they are then killed by Nissassa, the entire game goes dark and resets. As in, the avatar’s webcam goes black, and — from what I imagine — the two people hosting the room are frantically putting every prop on the physical set back in its original place and resetting all the puzzles, including any resources you might have “used up” or destroyed during the last round of gameplay. Your player character then respawns, the camera turns on again, and your progress is reset to the beginning of the game, much like a classic adventure game. After Wolf respawns, you’ll need to help them re-solve all of the puzzles and attempt to foil Nissassa all over again.
While your player group retains the memories of what did or didn’t work before, neither of the two characters seem to. The team has the ability to make different or better choices on the subsequent go-arounds. So if at first you don’t succeed, try again. And again. And again. I think we must have killed our poor agent at least four or five times throughout the course of the 90 minute game? And the experience essentially rewards you for trying wild solutions and failing; in fact, you need to keep failing in order to succeed during Pursuit of the Assassin Artist as the act of failing gives the team information they otherwise wouldn’t have. Requiring “outside knowledge” is usually verboten in escape rooms so the experience here is purposefully breaking a tried and true “rule” in escape room design — to great effect. And the time loop mechanic makes the gameplay Assassin Artist feel wholly fresh and innovative while also hitting a nostalgic chord for anybody who grew up on, say, PC games like the King’s Quest series. There’s a reason why this room was recently rated one of the best remote rooms in the world and I can only concur with the chorus of praise around the unique structure of the time loop-ed gameplay. But their use of player failure/death combined with a live actor also brings up some interesting issues.
A good immersive theatre interaction often feels like a partner dance, although one where the performer leads and the participant follows. Whereas in Pursuit of the Assassin Artist, the players have all of the control over the avatar, so they are acting in a role closer to a puppet master than anything, holding power over the actor in the physical room. While it’s easy to feel blasé about accidentally (or purposefully) killing your player character in a video game over and over, I had mixed feelings about asking my escape room avatar to do something that could potentially harm or kill them, particularly since they seemed quite obedient and I “saw” the entire experience through their eyes on Zoom. At the same time, any particularly lethal action also seemed like a necessary evil to bring the team closer to its goals and we would be stuck otherwise; it’s a strange balance to tread between empathizing with your player character because you can “see” through their eyes while also really wanting to win the game, and knowing it was an either/or scenario. To be honest, I still don’t know how to feel about this design decision, other than it’s extremely compelling, for a multitude of reasons.
Pursuit of the Assassin Artist is a ground-breaking online escape room and remarkable in its structure; it’s also a lot of fun. The looping mechanic in the game can only really be executed in an online capacity. So turning this experience into an IRL physical room for a team with multiple people just doesn’t make sense. And the idea of a remote team of players controlling a single player “character” who acts as their avatar but has an infinite number of “lives” is such a fascinating one, bringing up a number of possible directions online escape games can go in, in the future.
I’m also struck by the mind-bending emotional and psychological quandaries regarding the themes of control, and power in escape rooms like this one. How do I feel about killing Agent Wolf? Is it right that I have this much power over this avatar? Should I just try not to think too hard about the commands I’m giving them and the eager willingness for Agent Wolf just to do whatever we, the players, say? What does it mean to purposefully kill your player character when they’re made out of flesh and blood and not pixels? What does it say about us, as people, when we gleefully murder them in pursuit of a goal, knowing they’ll “spawn” back at the beginning a few moments later, memories erased?
I find myself in an in-between space where I can’t really think of any good answers to the questions I was asking myself after the game. And, to be frank, I am still asking myself these questions, weeks later. It is perhaps a testament to the staying power of this experience, much like experiencing a thought-provoking, compelling piece of art. Pursuit of the Assassin Artist is — rightfully — an escape game that is likely to be studied for years to come. And, frankly, I can’t wait to see what OMESCAPE has up their sleeves next.
Many thanks to Cara Mandel for her assistance in writing this review.
Pursuit of the Assassin Artist is an ongoing experience; tickets are $179 for teams of 2–8 players.
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