Beating the Bomb in Agent November’s ‘Major X Ploe-Shun’ (A NoPro Escape)

by Shelley Snyder
Shelley Snyder
•
October 1, 2018
•
5 min read

Can NoPro save London in time?

My companion and I amble toward our destination in central London on a breezy early evening in September. The sun is tipping toward the horizon and the after-work crowds usually surging through the main commuter veins are trickling off. We veer off the beaten path, advancing deeper into the neighborhood surrounding the British Museum and its neighboring universities. Our instructions mandate a strict arrival time and require a safeword to be delivered to our contact: an agent lying low in a park and recognizable only by their trilby. We locate our target after some exploration of the area and make contact, starting the game and triggering the countdown to hopeful victory.

This is the beginning of a scenario presented by Agent November, a company that offers several adventures throughout the city and has recently returned from launching an entirely new series at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, making them one of the more active and evolving escape-puzzle companies operating in London. Though Agent November recommends parties of 3–7 guests at a time, this evening it’s just my companion and myself attending. I took care to ensure I secured a partner who was well-versed in escape rooms and puzzles, as I am woefully under-qualified to take on the challenge without an expert by my side.

Our host introduces us to the story through a combination of acting and a multimedia brief — we are to save the nearby museum from a bombing by exploring our surroundings for items and clues that will help us deactivate the nearby device. To do this, we’ll need to break through the seemingly dozens of locks and bolts which festoon the interior of a nearby oversized briefcase; presumably the bomb sits at the centre of this hardware Gordian Knot. We are not to stray from the boundaries of the park, and we are not to expect any hidden physical clues to be more than twenty meters from the location of the briefcase. As the briefing draws to a close and we begin eyeing one another for a plan of attack, the timer begins ticking and we have less than an hour to save the day.

Within moments my companion and I are no longer dignified members of cultured city society. Instead we are frantically running around the park, barking into handheld radios at each other and excitedly whooping as each solved clue brings us one step closer to the next series of riddles. There are photos of important locations with which we must line our visuals up with our surroundings to find physical keys, there are puzzle pieces that must be reassembled, there are coded number sequences, and there are scrambled messages that must be translated. While all of the gameplay takes place within the realm of one small park, there is enough to keep a crowd busy and the two of us are run ragged.

Our host keeps a parental eye on us throughout the experience, guarding our work from passers-by and giving the occasional pointed reminder when we self-detrimentally stray from the initial guidelines. Having just seen the extensive exposition delivered in the initial briefing and being a veteran of more script-driven performances, I am continually goading our host for cues and engagement. I’m hoping that he has more narrative to deliver and expecting that perhaps some portion of the solution is based on interpersonal interaction. It isn’t; our host holds no keys to the puzzle. The progression of the story rests solely with us as players, and if we fail to move forward the remainder of the experience will stay a mystery.

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Shockingly, we win the game with a remarkable amount of time left, especially for only two people. We can only attribute our success to the fact that we work particularly well together and were not wasting time communicating with partnered groups of strangers or too many other players.

Agent November’s meticulous, devious game design allows no fast fixes or speedy solutions and without my brilliant companion I would have foundered on the rocks of obtusity. Teamwork and trust is essential in this experience — players should be willing to accept that in order to succeed they must split off and experience their own portion of the adventure as teammates are experiencing theirs. Not everyone will know what’s going on all the time, and not everyone can understand or be present for every solution in order to win. In this aspect the game can be deeply personal. I was racing around gathering game pieces from the furthest reaches of the park while my partner was back at the base decrypting the myriad clues I delivered. Together we unraveled the knotted storyline but we mutually agreed that the ticking clock was more important than needing to see the whole picture.

In our short informal chat with our host after the experience, he explains that Agent November wears many hats (trilbies included): part escape room, part puzzle game, and part interactive/immersive theatre. Their scenarios seek not to dominate any single realm of entertainment but to engage a wide range of tastes and interest levels. More timid or self-conscious players may find emotional engagement difficult when expected to run around a public park in close proximity to members of the public, and our host’s withdrawal from active assistance or delivering any development of the narrative during our puzzle-solving left us feeling emotionally abandoned by our caretaker. This lack of environmental immersion contributed to my companion’s and my feelings that we did not share a particularly special evening of escapism, though my companion was giddy on the rush of a highly detailed puzzle game well solved.

In spite of experiencing no sense of losing one’s self in another realm, the Agent November scenarios are still engaging entertainment. Players have something to do at all times; there are clear goals and challenges with no breaks from the playing space, and there is certainly more to the experience than just solving a puzzle box. For those looking for a nonstandard night out in London with a one-hour investment, the Agent November adventures offer the perfect outdoor escape for your fair-weather events.

Agent November’s Major X Ploe-Shun continues through December 2018. Tickets are £120.00 and up.

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