After a long time, I succeeded in booking an escape room, so I went to Zero World Gangnam after work for dinner. I was lucky to find a canceled spot and was able to get a caller. I was a little hesitant because I heard it was difficult, but it's not a theme that I would want to do anytime, so I decided to take the plunge.
Introducing ZeroWorld
Zero-world concept
Zero World is an escape room cafe filled with exciting stories by professional writers, realistic interiors, novel devices, and fresh problems. It has a headquarters in Gimpo and several branches in the Seoul metropolitan area, including Hongdae, Lotte World, Gangnam, and Seohyeon.
In my personal opinion, Zero World is an escape room cafe that does horror themes particularly well. Zero World's Gangnam branch's "Ring Colpo," which is said to be one of the top three scares, is very popular among escape room enthusiasts, and even though the theme has been open for quite some time, it's still difficult to get a reservation.
Zero-world location
Zero World Gangnam is located between Sinnonhyeon and Gangnam subway stations. No matter which station you get off at, you'll be there in about 5 minutes on foot. There are a lot of escape room cafes in the area, but for some reason I keep coming back to Zero World...
Introduction to the CALLER theme
About Play
Genre: Horror
- ZeroWorld Official Website
Price: KRW 54,000 for 2 people / KRW 75,000 for 3 people / KRW 92,000 for 4 people
Time: 75 minutes
Referrals : 3 people
Fear Index : ?
Difficulty : ★★★★★
Device Ratio : Mechanism 50% / Lock 50%
Theme synopsis
I lost my memory.
- ZeroWorld Official Website
In common, zero-world themes don't seem to have friendly synopses - there's no background or plot that you need to know before you escape, which makes you more curious, and you're more likely to look at the poster and infer the mood and situation.
In the case of the caller I played this time, the description ended with 'I lost my memory', but even the fear index was a question mark(?), so I was more curious. I looked up the reviews of the escape room cafe I frequented, and some people said it was the scariest, and some people said it wasn't scary at all... It seems that there are likes and dislikes for fear.
Escape Room Reviews
Player Information
2 Player - 1 Tang / 1 Zool
A friend of mine who played Escape Room with me once said, "Caller is more fun in pairs," so I believed him and went with him. After I started playing, I hit the ground and regretted it. (I shouldn't have believed him... 😱) You can do it in pairs, but that's only if you have two tangs.
Difficulty Level
★★★★★
Caller had the highest difficulty rating on the official website, and it wasn't for nothing. If you look at the problems one by one, I don't think they're that difficult. It's easy to find clues around you and the guide is friendly, so even Bang-ryun can solve them if he's observant enough. But... there are a lot of problems. Since it's a horror theme, the light level is low, and the spooky interior... it's not an easy environment to observe. I think we've done 20+ escape rooms so far, but I wanted to see the ending, so I put hints here and there. I don't think there are many problems that I solved myself(...)
Activity
★☆☆☆☆
It's safe to say that you're not very active. However, you will have to crouch down to open the locks at the bottom, so a short skirt might be a little uncomfortable. If your crew does all of this for you, it's just standing and walking... but hey, it's a horror theme, right? Unintentional activity may occur depending on the person Warning!
Fear
★★★★☆
I can't go into too much detail because it's a spoiler, but there's a "demon section" in Caller. I've played a few of ZeroWorld's horror themes (Forest, Zero, etc.), so until I encountered that section, I thought it was just another typical ZeroWorld scare. It was scary, but I was able to predict where the screeching and visualizations would come from.
But when I came to that section, my brain just shut down... I had this overwhelming urge to do one of two things: time out and fail, or quit... but then I realized that if I didn't do anything, I wasn't going to get out of here... 😭 So I relied on my phone hints and walkie-talkies and just turtled along, little by little. Ha... Caller is a really brutal and scary theme for Chol.
Interior
★★★★☆
It has a definite interior structure that starts out okay and ends with a smash and carry(?). At first, I thought, "It's a little boring for Zero World," but every time I opened a new space, it turned into, "No, I can't go in here," and by the end, I was like, "I can't really go in here.
It's like a buffet of different concepts! If you feel like your interior is bland when you start, don't let that stop you, especially if you're a nervous wreck... 🫥
Device Ratio
Padlock: Device - 5: 5
There's a lot of locks, there's a lot of devices, and we pretty much used hints for the locks to see the ending. I don't remember the devices being super novel, I think they were more about surprise. And of course there's the beeps.
Stories
★★☆☆☆☆
It's not a story-focused theme, so if that's important to you, you might be disappointed. It's not a complicated story, so there's nothing to get lost in, and if you just follow the flow, you'll naturally come to the conclusion. It's a story that needs to be played to the end to be complete, so I recommend using the hints to get to the ending if possible, but it's not a story that's going to make you want to do it again if you don't see the ending.
Note that the caller says that the progress must be over 92% before the story can be told later.
Final Evaluation
Dirt - Grass - "Flower Road" - Life themes
I don't feel like Caller is a great story, but I don't think story is what people want in a horror theme... I think they just need a reasonably well-developed story set-up and enough interiors and effects to make them feel afraid and scared. In that sense, Caller is a "blossoming" theme for me... it starts off relatively light, gradually builds up, and then comes crashing down at the climax... it's gorgeous. I'll admit, I almost melted and disappeared...🫠
After Forrest, Caller also escaped - I've been wanting to play all three of Zero World's scares this summer, and now all that's left is Ring. Of the three themes, Ring is the hardest to book (scariest...?), so I'm not sure if I'll be able to do it before the summer is over, but I'll still be poking around the booking page whenever I feel like it.
This Saturday, I'm federally booked for the Dystopian - Rendering - Slasher at Incheon Doomscape, so my next Escape Room review will be a dystopian one. That's all for now, thanks for reading.
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