Our opinion:

By Snow & Saol

When you love, you don't count and when you are addicted, reason no longer exists.

That's why I couldn't go on a school trip to Germany without making a room there. My first room without Saol, my first German room. But let's face it, the opportunity is too beautiful and I wanted to show 2 of my friends what an escape game is. For me it's an all or nothing, because if they don't like it, it will be 2 less followers, while if the room is good... we will have won 2 new addicts.

Knowing that we were in the countryside near Cologne, but that we couldn't go too far not to abandon the children too long with their father, I chose a room with a subject I didn't know about: a hair salon.

I love the rooms in a place we are used to seeing in our daily lives.

I think that the feeling of succeeding in a mission is always very important so I asked for advice on which room to do with 2 beginner friends. We were advised against Die Schnittstelle but we could not be told why... especially because we find a lot of things from the beginning a priori.

But we're going to do it anyway, because we have a crazy desire for a hairdresser:)

Let's start with the brief. No drinks or sweets (but we are used to it... it is not a tradition in German-speaking countries). And then our MJ takes out a plastic sheet and starts READING to us the origin of escape games (point and click, asia, europe, blah blah blah blah....)

Then he reads the brief to us (my friends noticed that I tried to put intonation in the translation, which made the brief even more ridiculous). We have lost all contact with our secret agent. The last message we received tells us that he is injured and tells us about a hair salon. Our mission to find him as soon as possible is to go to this room to find the clues left by the agent and transmit the location to our hierarchy. So we are ready to go when the DOJ decides to explain the safety instructions to us (what an idea! after the brief history... well, nothing surprises us).

Our MJ absorbed by his reading

So we enter the hairdresser's salon with a children's play area.

What will generate me the most is the floor covering, there is a small corner with linoleum floor, then carpet (in a hair salon!?!?!??).

But hey, that won't stop us. So we start digging and quickly find out what it is. The system is pretty good. We need to find some figures. Each number comes from a puzzle in the room. It is therefore not at all linear (which can indeed be complicated for beginners, but we have done quite well).

The puzzles are on the whole well done, quite original and very well integrated into the scenery. It is especially the children's games side that is exploited.  We appreciated finding a room without locks, with mechanisms that work. The puzzles appeal to our sense of observation and deduction.

The space is big enough to evolve in, but we would have liked to evolve more in space.

What we really regret is the total lack of sound atmosphere. No hair salon is so well soundproofed!

The story of the spy is also just an excuse, which is not really exploited in the room and the clues by screen make no sense. That's a pity. Likewise, the way of showing us the spy's original message is strange.

Once all the code has been found, a last little puzzle allows us to locate the secret agent after 45 minutes. We are not proud to go out so quickly when the Mj doubted that we would make it. Her enthusiasm is non-existent, that of my friends all the more so.

We had fun with wigs

In conclusion:

Die Schnittstelle is a pleasant surprise in a small German village. The subject / place is original, the enigmas are not linear and adapted to small or large groups. It is a nice room for beginners, as well as for more experienced players, with original puzzles, but in a setting that lacks detail and realism without any atmosphere. We also regret the brief read and totally boring.