Are these the ultimate escape room games?
You have been “invited” by Professor Cheshire and his assistant Hildegarde to try their new experiments. They are obsessed with people’s minds and want to see how you react to their experiments. Explore and solve puzzles with your friends in this multiplayer escape room game!
I must admit I hadn’t heard of the Mad Experiments games before they came to consoles, but the original came out on PC in 2020 and its sequel in 2022 so it’s been a long time before the console versions have launched, and they have launched individually both at the same time just to add to the confusion.
Since they have both launched simultaneously, I have decided to review them together and if I feel they deserve separate scores, I will state this. The games are both first-person escape room games, each with a number of different stages that you can play either solo or with people online. I’m surprised it only released PS4 versions though, why not a native PS5 version?
The escape rooms themselves are pretty clever, but you can also get clues up to help you and you can place objects in mid-air so you can retrieve and track them easier. I did have problems finding people to play with through matchmaking, but I was able to play with some family and we had a good time with it overall.
I can’t really determine if the first or second game is better than the other, as the sequel feels more of the same. Both games are enjoyable in their own right and since the story is pretty low-key in both, you could play it in any order you like. The visuals are impressive considering it’s a PS4 title in 2025 and the soundtrack is decent overall. Framerate was consistent and I encountered only a few niggling bugs here and there, but nothing huge.
The Verdict
Mad Experiments: Escape Room and Mad Experiments 2: Escape Room are both pretty interesting games that you can tackle alone or online. It’s a clever game and if it can sort out its matchmaking and a few issues, it could be even greater.