The following is a review of Improbable Escapes’ The Cure for the Common Zombie. It may contain minor spoilers around progression and puzzle themes. You can read our sister site’s review of Improbable Escapes’ other remote escape room option, Neverland: Heist on the High Seas, here.

Our intrepid hostess Liz has thus far been game to follow our instructions. With our help, she’s been solving the puzzles needed to synthesize and disseminate a cure for the zombie virus that has infected three quarters of Earth’s population, but now she’s hesitant. Understandably so, given that we’re asking her to open a door with a rather ominous warning hastily painted on it.

“You’re sure this is the one you want me to open?” Liz asks.

“Yes,” we reply from the safety of our homes, nearly in unison.

But Liz presses the issue: “The door that explicitly says not to open it because there’s dead stuff inside?”

The Cure for the Common Zombie is one of three escape rooms by Kingston, ON-based Improbable Escapes that have been made available for online play. Like its sibling Neverland: Heist on the High Seas, The Cure for the Common Zombie takes an avatar-based approach similar to Hourglass Escapes’ Evil Dead 2: One of Improbable Escapes’ staff is physically in the room, interacting with props and inputting puzzle solutions based on participants’ instructions over Zoom. Participants rely on the avatar’s phone camera to see what’s happening and spot clues, while inventory management comes in the form of a website where photos relevant to rooms and puzzles are unlocked via passwords delivered by the avatar when appropriate. The Cure for the Common Zombie is intended for 3-7 players, and follows the standard sixty-minute format – groups will need to guide the avatar through all puzzles and out the exit in under an hour in order to win. Hints are available for when the group gets really stuck, and asking for one does not penalize teams.

The set-up for The Cure for the Common Zombie (given in-character by Games & Prop Manager Liz during our play-through) is that a nuclear accident has given rise to a mutated version of the common cold, whose vastly-worsened symptoms chiefly include turning anyone infected into a rabid zombie. As the last surviving member of a team sent to investigate rumors of a secret research facility working on a cure in the frozen wasteland that is Northern Canada, the avatar has asked those participating to help them gain entrance to the facility, use the lab equipment to synthesize the cure, and save the world.

The Cure for the Common Zombie is mostly kid-friendly, with some minor horror bits but nothing that feels truly scary. In terms of difficulty, it feels easy-to-middling – absolutely doable for teams who are new to escape rooms, but it’s probably helpful to bring along at least one veteran. In terms of flow, The Cure for the Common Zombie is reasonably non-linear; each “act” of the room requires assembling multiple components of a solution that can be pursued independently before assembling them in order to progress to the next stage. The puzzles are varied in their design and the types of reasoning needed to solve them, which is an essential part of successful escape room design. When a blend of verbal, spatial, mathematical, logical, and visual acuity are all necessary to solve the room quickly, it rewards teams that bring a diverse group to the table, and gives most participants an opportunity to shine. The Cure for the Common Zombie does an excellent job of ensuring this is the case.

But an escape room is more than just the puzzles it contains; to really stand out, a room has to offer enough story to engage participants and transport them into whatever narrative they’re pursuing. This is a big strength of The Cure for the Common Zombie. A lot of thought, care, and creativity obviously went into the design and construction of the room’s puzzles, and the end result is commendable. Even through Zoom, The Cure for the Common Zombie makes sense. The ice cave  in which the game begins looks like an ice cave, the props and puzzle elements fit within the story of players finding the remains of an earlier failed expedition, the lab contains a wide array of odd-looking machinery and puzzles that feel on-point for a last-ditch attempt to save humanity. Likewise the locks to be opened run the gamut from traditional combination and padlocks to more technically-sophisticated options integrated into the set itself. One thing The Cure for the Common Zombie gets right is making sure that both the puzzles and the locks make sense within the context of the room’s narrative, which only enhances participant immersion. It’s all too easy for escape room creators to just slap a bunch of combination locks everywhere and hope nobody notices. However, in today’s highly-competitive escape room landscape, it’s necessary for creators to think about how to get creative with how players input solutions, and make sure that each element of the room fits within the story being told.

Unfortunately, and ironically, a few design decisions that work very well for an in-person room don’t translate as well to an online play-through. The Cure for the Common Zombie has a fair bit of physicality involved. One puzzle, in particular, involved quickly moving to very specific points in the room. The puzzle was fun enough over Zoom, but telling the avatar where to run didn’t have as much impact as it would have for a group of people physically in the room, calling out the sequence to one another. The same holds true for puzzles where carefully-hidden props needed to be found. Putting some folks on search duty while others work on more location-specific puzzles works great for an in-person experience, but it loses something when you instead have to make the avatar go wander around the room and pan their camera into every nook and cranny.

In fact, camera management and avatar communication are elements unique to remote escape rooms that can make or break an experience. It matters when an avatar is a fleshed-out character rather than just a proxy, particularly in rooms that sink a lot into committing to the narrative and theme. Perhaps more important, though, is the art of “hinting without hinting” via the avatar’s camera perspective. In an avatar-based room, participants only see what the avatar shows them at any given point, and a subtle but vital skill is the ability to make sure said camera lingers on important props or visual clues just long enough for participants to spot them without feeling obvious about it. In our play-through of The Cure for the Common Zombie, Liz was very good at both. It still felt like a discovery when a canister or symbol was spotted, and the personality and humor she brought to her interactions with us only added to the experience.

Inventory management, keeping track of the props and puzzles the team has found and whether they’ve been used, is another element that poses unique challenges for online escape rooms. While the set-up isn’t quite as intuitive as The Basement’s My Name is Jamie, for example, Improbable Escapes’ interface for The Cure for the Common Zombie does a decent job. The photos provided through the room’s website were definitely helpful for figuring out where to find clues and input solutions, and the unlock system ensured that players only saw what they needed to see and prevented any spoilers from being revealed.

If there’s been a silver lining for escape rooms due to the COVID-related restrictions, it’s been how companies like Improbable Escapes have figured out how to allow participants to play through their rooms without actually setting foot onsite. Being able to play The Cure for the Common Zombie from Los Angeles despite the room being located thousands of miles away was a real treat as a participant, and for room operators it allows even long-established rooms access to fresh audiences after they’ve gone through most of the local enthusiasts. The Cure for the Common Zombie is probably best experienced in-person, but the online version is still plenty engaging, challenging, and fun.

To book tickets, contact the company, or explore the other rooms and games Improbable Escapes has available, you can visit their website here. You can also follow them on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. Check out our Event Guide for more escape rooms and immersive entertainment throughout the year.

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