Quadra: Remote Chance, A Cinematic Escape (San Jose, CA)

A fun and unique experience with a great group!

After enjoying "The Time Travel Lab" at Quadra, we decided to try out their latest game, "Remote Chance". While this wasn't a SCRAP game (Quadra created their own) there were definitely influences in terms of style. Triggers were all done via in-game actors and the interaction was actually quite unique and creative.

Of course, the success rate was low, somewhere in the single digits and typical of a SCRAP-like game. We were in a public room and somehow they booked over the max of 12 players (there were 13). Our theory was that the group prior to our timeslot didn't have enough people so they put them with our timeslot. A bit underhanded as they didn't think to ask us beforehand about it. The story was as follows: 

"Remote Chance is the latest movie from the great director Alan Smithee. It was unfortunately rushed through production and had a poor theatrical release. Alan Smithee decided to make a director's cut of his movie but passed away before he could finish. Luckily, he did leave behind clues in his office for someone to take up his work to complete filming and creating that director's cut."

The style of the game was similar to "The Time Travel Lab" and Kuma's "Detention" in that it was loaded with low tech puzzles in an average set design and had in-game actors as your game master. There were a lot of things to solve and we did well except for one early puzzle that actually wasn't that difficult. We stared for 20 minutes at this one thing and by the time we got it, there wasn't enough time to finish off a third of the game in 10 minutes.

The "cinematic experience" was really cool. There are some interactions that we had never seen before that were refreshing to play. The only thing that was off was that in order to move along in the game, you have to do some repetitive time consuming stuff which felt like a massive hassle. If we could have fast forwarded through the repetitive process (this would actually be easy to implement), the experience could flow much better.

That being said, the uniqueness of the room was fun and worth playing if you have the chance.

Pros: Unique and fun actor interaction
Cons: Too many people, some parts feel too time consuming

• Set/room design: Average
• Technology/automation: Gen-1 room (low tech)
• Difficulty: Difficult, tons of puzzles
• Price: $30/person
• Number of players: 6-12, open to the public (we recommend 8)
• Duration: 60 minutes
• Overall Rating: ★★★½ 

See their website here: http://realescapegame.com/sjttl