Overlook Hotel

This is a review of the Escape Room “Overlook Hotel” offered by Maximum Escape in Barcelona, Spain.
  • ⭐️ 7.5/10
  • 🌡 Medium
  • ⏳ 75 Minutes
  • 👥 3 – 5 Person

Maximum Escape – together with Unreal one of the two big players – has a opened a third location in Barcelona! This is simply called Maximum Escape 3 and is very close to Maximum Escape 2. Various activities are offered here. Besides a VR Escape, there is also the Abandoned hospital, a kind of immersive experience, which you will live through, like “Phantom” of Escroom in Hamburg, with closed eyes and only with your senses. But of course, we are here for the job posting.

We read in the newspaper that the Overlook Hotel is looking for a team of caretakers for the winter season, and sweetened the long-term isolation, over several months, with free accommodation, a lavish salary and full access to all the hotel facilities. Sounds like a well-paid easy job, which we gratefully accept. A perfect opportunity to get away from the stress of everyday life and to slow down. So, the fact that the mobile phone network is not working up here does not bother us.

Does the story sound familiar to anyone? Yes, of course it is (as in Kamer 237 in Volkel, NL) about Stephen King’s horror novel Shining, which cult director Stanley Kubrick filmed with Jack Nicholson in the role of the charismatic winter caretaker of the hotel in the Rocky Mountains, 1980. When we arrive at the hotel, the hotel manager shows us the rooms and explains the details, but somehow, we get the feeling that he is hiding something from us. This briefing is done by the In-Character-GM, as customary in Maximum Escape, in order to get an immersive introduction to the games.

Atmosphere and decoration are, as we are used to with this provider, well done (isn’t the hallway carpet cool?) and there are also some great effects. It might be recommendable to watch the movie Shining again before, as there are some obvious and hidden references to it in Overlook Hotel.

The puzzles – most of them electronic – are well integrated. The game flow faltered at 1-2 places in the 2nd part of the game, and we didn’t really know what we had to do. Nevertheless, it was altogether a quite entertaining escape game, which is advertised for 3-5 players. But I would recommend four people as the upper limit. Overlook Hotel is FSK 18 (from 16 with parents), but I wouldn’t classify this room as particularly creepy. I think it’s a good place to get a taste of the genre.

Heiner Stepen

Heiner Stepen