Style: An adventure in your mind
Where: Zoom
Length: Approx 2 hours
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
Manor of Lies is a romp. It is fast paced, fun and sometimes silly.
You and a group of strangers have to team up to solve a murder before it is pinned on you. You meet the residents of Darcy Manor as you meet up with your old friend the roguish Lord Dante Rochester. The twist is you can’t see anything. As soon as you meet your team, you are blindfolded and stay that way throughout the mystery.
I wasn’t too sure how that was going to work. I have been blindfolded in real life immersive, but on Zoom it seemed a bit odd. And at times it was. It took a while to stop believing people were just taking stupid screenshots of me. And it’s quite hard finding your can of coke while blindfolded!
However, the gameplay was fun and engaging and it was an excellent team building exercise with each of us naturally taking on certain roles as our investigation into blackmail morphed into an investigation into murder.
The characters were about as well fleshed out as you could hope for in a murder mystery. All played by Ben Felton and Emma Bostock (easier to do when it’s auditory only) there was a decent range and depth as well as a back story that was guessable (we got there) but challenging (we only just got there). And enough clues and sidelines along the way to keep my interest throughout.
I started the evening absolutely exhausted and was a little concerned as to how I would do with being blindfolded for two hours. As it turned out my interest was held throughout and the excitement of chasing down the culprit was enough to invigorate me.
This is a fun way to spend the evening. While the premise may sound like immersive on the cheap (and tbf it probably is) the product is well thought through, engaging, entertaining and bloody good fun.
Soaked in Dreams 