The day before I came back to Singapore, I was in Huis Ten Bosch. Yes, again. Although in my defence, it was Yiyin’s first time there. So I was sort of acting like a tour guide (let’s not think about the fact that I invited her to come with me).

My main reason for going there was to try out the Dinosaur Escape Game, which runs until the end of September. You can read about it here, although the link is entirely in Japanese. The game is marketed as only having a 1% success rate, so I was really really excited about it!

WARNING: Extremely picture-heavy post ahead.

Entrance

The game is located at the Adventure Park, close to the entrance. You can’t miss it because it looks like it came out of a Jurassic Park movie.

Ticket – 500 yen per device

The ticketing system was… unique. 500 yen is the cost of one handheld device, so you can have a group of people going in with one device. But, only one person can advance to the second stage (there are 3 stages in total), so if everyone wants to go forward, it may be better to get one device each.

The boots were free.

 Before you even enter the arena, you have to go through a pathway. It’s not that muddy, but the first-stage arena is. So you should definitely use the free boots.

Woohoo – I was all excited.

They even had this dinosaur! I want to say “cute”, but I doubt that was the effect that they were going for.

And here we are patiently waiting.

The game devices had four languages – English, Japanese, Chinese and Korean. While all the explanation is in Japanese, there are translations written out (and shown on the screens during the video time). So it’s pretty foreigner-friendly, in my opinion.

The situation is that the Japanese have discovered a way to revive the dinosaur using super DNA. However, terrorists have broken in, and the head scientist hid the vial of super DNA in his office. We have to go and find the super DNA before the terrorist get their hands on it.

3 of the 4 screens with different languages on them.

Stage 1 is to use a QR code reader on the device to collect parts of the dinosaur. There was 10 minutes allocated for this.

Example of a QR code

While the QR codes were hidden in plain sight, most of them are dummy codes. A few of them will even wipe out your progress. And, each different device responds to different codes, so good luck following someone around.

Can you see part of my dinosaur?

 Photos were not allowed, so that’s all I have for the Dinosaur game. But basically, the first stage arena was in a “dinosaur park”, with the dinosaurs in the various cages. Like I said, the QR codes are in plain sight, so it’s really just climbing around, and making sure you don’t fall into the mud (it rained heavily the days before).

And…. unexpectedly, Yiyin and I made it past the first stage! I got there at the ten minute mark! So close!

The second stage was inside the lab. Instead of QR codes, we have to find number codes that flesh out the dinosaur. There’s a time limit of 10 minutes, but only the first person who completes the dinosaur code can go on to the 3rd stage. Sadly, I didn’t even get to flesh out one part of my dinosaur. I guess I’m not a very good mad scientist.

But, there was this little kid who was forever playing his DS in the same group as us. And scarily, he’s also the first person to finish both stage 1 and 2. Either he’s played this before, or he’s a genius at this.

The rest of our trip to Huis Ten Bosch was pretty normal (nothing that I haven’t shared yet), except for my new friend – the robot ice-cream boy! I noticed his cart because he “sings”. And of course, I can’t help but buy some ice-cream from him!

Frantically searching for money.

I look like a mess from the game, but here’s me and my new friend!

He’s really cute! You can’t really see it with the glare, but he’s cute!

I can’t remember all the flavours, but I ordered vanilla ice-cream with strawberry sauce 😀

Robot-kun serving the ice-cream

 Ice-cream was pretty good too, but then again, I hardly ever dislike Japanese soft-cream.

One last shot:

I have a feeling I’ll be eating from this stall each time I visit Huis Ten Bosch. It’s really too cute for words!