The Life and Death of Paul Marrane
Presented by A Door In A Wall
May 1st-31st, 2015
www.adoorinawall.com/Event/life-and-death-of-paul-marrane
by Joanna Orland
Professor Paul Marrane is dead. It is the responsibility of Alder & Alder to execute his final wishes. The conditions of his will are very specific and unusual. We must solve the mystery to declare our faction as his heirs.
Throughout the month of May, real world interactive games company A Door In A Wall takes players beyond a murder mystery to follow a trail of clues to figure out the truth behind The Life and Death of Paul Marrane. Situated around the London area of Poplar, the game is quite an adventure as the mystery unfolds over the course of 3 hours.
On the evening of May 10th, four people known collectively as “The Loose Lips” arrived at Alder & Alder offices, ready to take on a mystery fit for Columbo. We decided to join the faction of Scientists rather than the Spiritualists, Bankers or Military who we deemed to be inferior organizations. LOGIC MUST PREVAIL.
The first assignment for any team is to go to their faction headquarters for a briefing and to collect a map of all of the trails. The trails consist of two streams – Paul’s Life Story to help your team solve the mystery of his life and death, and the Element Trails to get points for your faction to become Paul’s heirs. The more you collect on the trails, the better chance you have of winning the game. Although, you could also end up being so swamped with information that Paul’s life and death remains clouded in mystery for all of eternity. Either way, it doesn’t matter, because the true fun of this game is collecting the clues along the trails, and the satisfaction it gives you while doing so.
Along the trails you meet other teams, actors and real life residents of Poplar. The acting is not only spot on convincing, but some of the story arcs are full of quality comedy zingers. Clues are found through conversations with actors, labelled signage, phone calls, text messages, interpretive dance, you name it and it’s a way to communicate a clue! We had so much fun in our hunting that we almost didn’t care about solving the mystery – although, we still gave ourselves twenty minutes of time at the end of the adventure to sort through our findings and fill in the answers. I suggest you do the same if you’d like any hope of winning.
While the interest level in Paul’s story is questionable, the main adventure is a pure joy. Book now and get solving!
