Logiclock Nottingham: Casa Nostra – the Sicilian Adventure

 

Outside the room

After adjourning to the waiting area for a few minutes to allow our rooms to be reset (and take advantage of the separate waiting areas to allow us to discuss the previous game), it was time to go back in for Casa Nostra – the Sicilian Adventure. I didn’t really know what to expect of this game. Some sort of Mafia game obviously, but how would that play out?

Background

You’re in Sicily, in the villa of the Sicilian mafia, where four mafia bosses hold their meetings. You are the secret team of the British Spy Agency. You’ve only got 60 minutes to reveal all plans of the mafia bosses and escape from the villa using only your mind, logic and common sense. But be very careful, the mafia is very dangerous and if they catch you we can’t guarantee your safety….

Inside the room

My first reaction on walking through the door was of mild disappointment. The theme doesn’t look that impressive – it’s just a fairly normal room. It turns out that I was a little too hasty – the theme in this room is more subtle than that and, while I certainly wouldn’t say it was amazing, I thought it produced the goods fairly well. Repeated mafia references abounded, and there was a general feeling of being in a wealthy person’s home.

There’s little in the way of story as you move through the game, but there is a nice sense of progress – with an obvious series of goals along the way that helped you to feel like you were moving swiftly along. Strangely, while you have that sense of progress and achievement, it’s still hard to fathom whether you’re doing well or badly – while you’re making progress through what you *can* see, you really don’t have a feel for what’s beyond that, which adds a little bit of adrenaline to the fun.

Puzzle-wise, there’s good variety, with physical, logical and teamwork puzzles all on show. One puzzle particularly sticks out because we got utterly stuck on it for an age but really should have zoomed through it. It was horribly frustrating at the time but, as soon as we realised how it worked, it seemed incredibly obvious. To me, that’s the hallmark of a good puzzle. Hard to solve but, as soon as you have the answer, you’re certain it’s right and you’re kicking yourself for not seeing it sooner. Another puzzle in the room filled me with delight (in spite of not being on theme) because it was entirely unexpected – it wasn’t difficult but it brought a smile to my face nevertheless.

The game built to quite a finale, with the last few puzzles seeing you working together under pressure to finish the game. A slight disappointment was that the final mechanism to exit the room wasn’t as clear as I’d have liked – leaving us slightly nervous as to whether we were doing the right thing.

Result

We escaped in about 42 minutes having taken a couple of clues.

Verdict –

This is a solid, fun game and probably my favourite of the three at Logiclock. It’s not a game that’s going to blow you away, but a reasonable theme and some good puzzles will likely retain your interest, and the stress builds nicely through the game to keep the adrenaline flowing until the last moment.

Detailed Room Ratings

Venue
Host
Wow! factor
Immersiveness
Difficulty

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