Room 25 Ultimate

• Designer: Francois Rouze
• Publisher: Matagot
• Players: 1-8
• Ages: 10+
• Time: about 30 minutes
• Times played: 2, with review copy provided by Matagot

Room 25 Ultimate is a reboot of a game which kind of flew under the radar at Essen 2013.  Or at least I feel like it did (I honestly don’t have any sort of numbers to show how popular it was or wasn’t at the time).   The story is fairly simple.  Players are competitors in a futuristic game show where the players are all prisoners trying to escape from a maze of rooms.  This new version of the game keeps the old components of the original game while adding in a few “ultimate” additions to make the game ever more frenetic.

One of the hallmarks of the game is that there are multiple ways to play the game: cooperatively, competitively, solo, and even more.  From our previous experiences with the base game, my group prefers the co-op mode, and thus far, all of our games have been in that mode.  In this version, players work together to escape the maze of rooms.

At the start of the game, a central room is placed on the table.  A 5×5 grid is constructed out of room tiles – making sure that the exit room, “Room 25” is in one of the external corners.  Each player is given a player board – which is really just a huge player aid sheet to remind you of the actions/functions of the different room tiles.  All players place their plastic figure into the central room.  At the start of the game, the players get a clue, each is allowed to look at one orthogonally adjacent room tile to the central room.  In order to win the game, the players as a group must discover the Key Room, get everyone into Room 25 and then move that room off the board.

Each player starts the game with 4 base action tiles (move, push, control and look) as well as one special action token which is specific to each player.  Depending on which character you chose, you may also get some specific tokens to use with your ability.  It is up to your group to decide if you want to get characters randomly or to specifically choose them based on their abilities and how they might work together.

A start player is chosen and that player places his turn order marker on the appropriate space on the track for the number of turns in the game.  Players in clockwise order place their marker on the next space on the track.

The game is played in a number of rounds – the number of which changes with the number of players. In a 4p game, there are 8 rounds.  In each of these rounds, there are four phases:

M.A.C. card (Move Alone Complex card) phase – at the start of each round except the final round, draw 2 cards from the deck and apply their effects.  These cards may cause a row or column of rooms to shift OR they could be a Punishment card where specific characters must lose one of their basic action tokens.   For more advanced games, there is a second deck of “Madness” M.A.C. cards with even more varied actions.

Programming – Each player takes his action tiles and chooses one or two of them to use in this round.  The chosen tiles are placed face down to the right of your player board.  The players must also decide whether or not to use their adrenaline token; this is a once-in-a-game token which will give that player a third action in this round.  The adrenaline action can be any of the four base actions and can even be a repeat of one taken earlier in the round.  If a player only chooses one token, he places it in between the slots for Action 1 and Action 2.

Action – starting with the current start player, each player does the action corresponding to the tile in the first action space (if you only chose one action tile, when your turn comes around, you can decide if you’re going to take your action in the first or second round).  The basic actions include:

Look – choose a facedown tile which is orthogonally adjacent to your figure. Look at it secretly and then put it back in the same place.  You may only communicate the color of the room to the other players.

Move – move your figure to an adjacent room.  If the tile is still face down, flip it over when you enter it.  Then, apply the effects of the room when you enter it.

Push – push another character that is in your room into an adjacent room.  If the tile is face down, reveal it.  Then apply the effects of the room to the pushed character.  You may not push players from the Central room.

Control – Move a line of rooms that you are standing in (either vertical or horizontal). All rooms move one space in the desired direction and the room which was on the end loops around to the other side.  You may never move the Central room.  Place a marker showing the direction of movement of that chosen row/column – for the rest of this round, this row/column can only move in that direction.

Play goes around the table twice, with each player taking their chosen action.  If anyone had played their Adrenaline token, they get a third action at the end of the round where they can use any of the basic actions – even if it is an action that they already took earlier OR an action tile which they had been forced to discard due to a M.A.C. card.

The players win if they have met all the victory criteria.  They lose automatically if there are no more rounds.  If there is another round, the player marker which is last in line is moved up to the front, thus taking up the correct place in the turn track for the current turn.

My thoughts on the game

I remember playing Room 25 for a bit when it first came out, but at that time, my group wasn’t really much into cooperative games, so we didn’t play it that much.  The competitive version didn’t go over well at all though.  As you could imagine, I didn’t get the expansion packs to Room 25 as we never really played the original version.  However, it turns out that the game is much improved with the stuff from the expansion.

Taken from BGG:

The adrenaline token from season 2 now belongs to the basic rules

The MAC cards are mentioned only in the rules for the coop mode, not for the suspicion mode.

The following room from the base game is now part of the advanced rules:

– Illusion chamber (red room)

The following rooms from season 2 are now part of the basic rules:

– Key room (blue room for the coop mode)

– Tunnel chamber (green room)

– Pivoting room (yellow room)

– Shredder room (red room)

The coop game now is quite challenging, and there are a number of different ways to change the difficulty level of the game.  First, you can always choose which rooms go into the mix – and the rules give some suggestions on what ratios to use of the different colors.  Secondly, you can choose to use the “Madness” level M.A.C. cards which give you even more radical effects than the base cards.  You also draw an additional M.A.C. card after the programming phase to deal with each round.  Finally, you can also  choose to play without the adrenaline tokens – thus making it much harder to do all the things that you want to do.

Thus far, our group has been well challenged with just the regular M.A.C. cards, so we’ve only modified the room mix – and this has been very enjoyable for us.  The puzzle of finding the key room, Room 25 and then getting everyone into the final room can be quite tough, and it is made even more difficult with the random shifts provided by the M.A.C. cards.  It’s a nice puzzle that can be talked out and the group can plan out their moves accordingly.  The one downside of this is that quarterbacking can be an issue if everyone plans things out together – but that’s something which is true of almost any cooperative game…  In any event, the group must plan out strategies each turn as the randomizing MAC card actions always tend to throw a wrench into the best laid plans – so there are plenty of opportunities for players to give their advice.

The tiles are nice and thick and thus far we have not had any signs of wear on the components.  This is important because this is one of those games that can be adversely affected by wear.  If the Room 25 tile becomes easily distinguishable from the back, the challenge of the game is ruined.  The punching left us with nothing but clean edges, and so far I don’t see any signs of wear or it becoming an issue.

If you already have the base game and the expansions, I’m not sure if there are any substantial changes to cause you to buy this version.  If you do not have them though, this is a nice game which offers you a lot of variety in play modes.  For our group, the cooperative game fits us well.  As a group, we really dislike traitor style games, so we probably won’t ever play that way – but I have heard from a number of groups that the Traitor mode is the bees’ knees.  Of course, YMMV – and the game is great that it can accommodate all different styles of play.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y
• Neutral. Craig V
• Not for me…