Escape Room: Game Zero

Imagine you were playing a game but found you were trapped inside it. If you can't stop playing, is it even a game anymore?

Eden has played many Escape Rooms before, but the Escape is offering her something different. She has eagerly followed every clue to find the starting point. When she gets there, the sky turns black with a murmuration of starlings and she is transported to a new world of deserts and mountains, forests and valleys. She meets Ted and together they puzzle their way through riddles, challenges and danger to find the keys they need to reveal the secrets of The Escape. But somehow nothing is as it seems. Ted is convinced that Eden is a non-playing character. Eden knows she's real but can't work out how Ted can access powers she can't. Before long, she is quite literally playing for her life.

In Escape Room, Christopher Edge has once again found an unexpected angle from which to tell his story. He challenges the reader to think and engage as well as enjoy the excitement: in the context of a game, all perceptions may or may not be real. The conventions of time, character, place and space are cleverly manipulated so that the reader can take nothing at face value.

After reading it for the thrilling adventure, you may find yourself, like me, wondering about deeper topics and issues. What are the risks of artificial intelligence and artificial reality? It is a book which will appeal, of course, to children who love gaming, to those who love puzzles and challenges but also to those who crave turbo-charged adventure.

224 pages / Reviewed by Louisa Farrow, teacher

Suggested Reading Age 9+

Escape Room: Game Zero is a fantastically futuristic, modern and thought-provoking sci-fi adventure quest and battle for survival story, from an author who seamlessly blends classic adventure style with thoroughly contemporary settings. Christoper Edge incorporates the intriguing technology that the younger generations use so effortlessly and imagines the most thrilling and immersive fantasy worlds in his stories.

I received an exciting, early, numbered copy of GAME ZERO; inviting me into the game as temptingly as main character, young gamer Eden, is invited by AMI, to try a brand new, fully immersive online Escape Room. Following a set clues and codes, Eden makes her way to the data centre to take part in this unique and exclusive virtual experience but finds herself, instead, swept into the game itself and in the most dangerous and deadliest gamer zone of her life.

From the moment that a natural but phenomenal murmuration of starlings transforms into a 'game loading' circle, Eden becomes trapped within the Escape itself. Her only companion is gamer Ted, although in reality he is safe at home with his virtual helmet, and the first to attempt the challenges and trials of this state-of-the-art quest.

The action, pace and inventiveness of this story is intense and powerful. Every step Eden makes feels edgy and full of threat. As gamer companion Ted loses a life and gets to reboot , the grim reality for Eden is highlighted and makes for terrific tension as you read. There are weapons to collect, riddles to decipher, keys to collect and fierce, foreboding monsters to battle. Ted searches for a way through the puzzles to the end of the game to be crowned winner whilst Eden desperately seeks to solve the clues to avoid the final Endgame of her life.

The confusion, blending and over-lapping of the virtual and real world is explored with excitement, energy and imagination. Escape Room Game Zone is a brilliantly epic, engaging and edge-of-your-seat thrill to enter.

224 pages / Reviewed by Jennifer Caddick, teacher

Suggested Reading Age 9+