Escape Room Reviews: Mortuary Mystery

Company: South Bay Volunteer Center
Room: Mortuary Mystery (Beta Test)
Date Played: 9/24/17
Player Count: 4 (2 and 2 strangers)
Success:  Eventual Success! (as part of the testing process, we completed the room, but it took us longer than 60 minutes)

Premise: The South Bay Volunteer Center’s annual fundraiser this year is an escape room. There’s some kind of plot about employee malfeasance, but the real story is that this is an excellent pop-up room escape.

Immersion: The center itself was once the county morgue, and so the setting of this room (a morgue) is strikingly realistic!

Highlights: Interacting with real mortuary-ish props is neat. One of the most creative uses of a key I’ve ever seen.  

Lowlights: The flow of the room is kind of confusing. Both from a plot perspective, becuase I’m pretty sure the story doesn’t make sense, and from a puzzle perspective. I was unclear of what our ultimate goal was, and it kind of snuck up on me. Also, I got tricked by a thing that has fooled me before in other rooms. I need to learn!

And Finally: I played this room as a tester, so there is a very good chance things will change by the time you play it. The testing experience itself was great though - the designers were excited to see us run through it all and cheered on our successes. Story gripes aside, this is a pretty neat room. It’s more inventive and more physical than a lot of “pro” rooms we’ve played, and definitely worth checking out while it lasts. Which is only 5 weeks!   Out of the 34 games I’ve played, I’m ranking this one #14.

How to book this room yourself: Visit https://www.volcenter.org/escaperoom before October 29, 2017! Hurry!

Escape Room Reviews: The Smugglers' Tunnels

Company: Escape Chronicles
Room: The Smugglers’ Tunnels
Date Played: 9/4/17
Player Count: 4, a good minimum for this room.
Success:  Success!

Premise: As part of an elite crime ring that’s been burned, you need to get the goods, finger your traitorous partner, and get out!  The more work you do and the more puzzles you solve, the more stolen artifacts you can recover and the more cash you get to split with your crew.

Immersion: Escape Chronicles’ first room is well designed, but it’s an office theme, so that’s almost a gimme. This room looks as much or more like a cavern hideout than the Testing Facility looks like an office break room. 

Highlights: The Smugglers’ Tunnels has a wonderful system for giving each member of your ring of thieves secret, specialized knowledge. You’re not a bunch of henchmen, you’re hand picked for your unique skills, all of which are necessary to pull this thing off. The room features a non-linear series of tasks befitting each specialist. This room has fun interactions, some cool reveals, and plenty of things to keep everyone busy. 

Lowlights: I wasted some of my loot on calling a criminal mastermind for a hint when I should’ve totally seen the thing the hint was about. Also, we got suckered by a forgery instead of one of the real valuables. 

And Finally: I loved this room. With two excellent rooms, Escape Chronicles is officially my favorite escape company in Los Angeles (or anywhere). It may be neck-and-neck with Evil Genius, but so far I’ve only seen one room from them. The North Hollywood location might make Escape Chronicles seem a little off the beaten path, especially for visitors and tourists, but this should be considered one of LA’s can’t-miss games. Out of 33 games played, this one is practically tied for first. I'm going to call it #2.

How to book this room yourself: Visit https://www.escapechronicles.com/rooms/smugglers-tunnels/

Escape Room Reviews: One Way Ticket

Company: Maze Rooms
Room: One Way Ticket
Date Played: 9/4/17
Player Count: 4, which was plenty
Success:  Success!

Premise: You’re on a train! Also, there’s a bomb. On the train. Something to think about.

Immersion: The production design of the train is terrific. This set does not give the same sense of traveling between cars that Escapology's train game does, but the train decor is lovely, and the engineer’s station is steampunk fun.

Highlights: This room has a pretty good flow to it, and the set, as I say, looks great. The end game has some fun moments and interactions. I thought the section involving train routes was neat.

Lowlights:  We got stuck once, caved and asked for help, and it turned out to be one of those situations where we let a finicky prop convince us the right answer was the wrong answer.

And Finally:   This room is very heavy on collectibles. It’s not a very difficult game, but there’s a fair amount of search to do. This would be an excellent room for new players. Our group found it a little bit short. It would be fun to play as just a couple, but of course Maze Rooms discourages that (financially). Out of 32 games played, I'm putting this one down as #14. 

How to book this room yourself: Visit https://la.mazerooms.com/quest/one-way-ticket/

Escape Room Reviews: Escape Room in a Box

Company: Escape Room in a Box
Room: The Werewolf Experiment
Date Played: 8/19/17
Player Count: 2
Success:  Success!

Premise: You’ve purchased an escape room kit on kickstarter–wait, I mean, there’s some reason you might turn into a werewolf unless you solve a series of puzzles!

Immersion: This game does not effectively make you think you are in a mad scientist’s laboratory. To be fair, we didn’t follow the included party planning hints, which may have done the trick.  HOWEVER, this game does an okay job of making you feel like you’re playing a room escape game, which is a pretty good victory!

Highlights: While this game does have some basic paper-and-pencil kind of puzzles, it doesn’t feel like a workbook. There’s some genuine solving to do, some actual surprises, and some clever reveals, all while being self-contained in a surprisingly small box!  Comes with an object I wish I could take with me into every escape room. 

Lowlights: One element of the game broke in shipping. We didn’t actually realize exactly how it was broken until the game was over and we read the instructions on how to repack the game for a future player. 

And Finally:   Although I didn’t write up a little review for it, the only other tabletop escape room that I’ve played was the Escape the Room: Stargazer’s Manor box. (Summary: it’s fine. Worth buying on sale. More like an activity book than this game). This game differs from that one by including an impressive array of actual, physical objects to interact with, including real locks to be opened. This game is more expensive, but still much cheaper than most actual escape rooms, and does a great job of scratching that puzzle solving itch. 

Bonus highlight - when I wrote to the creators to inform them about the broken part of our game (mostly as a field report, not a complaint), they sent us a replacement part for use in repacking the game, hand delivered by one of their friends who lives somewhere nearby! That’s service!

I'm not going to place this on my list of ranked escape rooms, because that seems weird and unfair.  But if I did, it would probably beat at least half a dozen 'real' rooms. 

How to book this room yourself: UPDATE: The mass-market edition of the game is now available. You can buy it from Amazon here: http://amzn.to/2DaXwbb

Escape Room Reviews: Grandma's Master Plan

Company: 60 Out
Room: Grandma’s Master Plan
Date Played: 8/6/17
Player Count: 4
Success:  Success!

Premise: From the company website, "The story begins when your granny suddenly disappears without notice. No one has a clue where she is, but one day you come across a letter in which your grandmother reveals a secret about her inheritance. All you have to do is to go into her house and find it -- simple, right? We'll see about that."

Immersion: This is an escape unlike any I’ve ever done before. In a lot of games, any failure of the set design to simulate a real-world location makes the game an approximation of the real thing, but I believe Grandma’s to be the first *impressionist* Escape Room that I’ve played. Each of the multiple rooms is stripped down to the vital and memorable bits, yes, but I don’t believe that they are, in the story, literally connected to each other. Each space is probably a different location, and would take place some time after the previous space. They are more like levels of a video game than a literal hour (or in this case, 75 minutes) in your characters’ afternoon.

Highlights: As in every 60Out game, Grandma’s brings sharp set and prop design, an abundance of magical objects (our pet term for objects that are probably outfitted with some kind of sensors to ‘know’ when they’ve been used correctly, as opposed to traditional padlocks), and cleverly designed spaces to explore. Some of the interactions are very neat. One puzzle that I’ve seen used before (in another 60Out game, no less!) worked better here than anywhere else I’ve seen it done. 

Lowlights: Player damage in one area lead us to accidentally skip a puzzle, because a ‘locked’ item no longer closed properly. One prop was especially finicky. The gold shown in the advertisement turns out to be fake. These are very small complaints. 

And Finally:   This is an extra large room, and you are given an extra large amount of time (at an extra large price) to solve it all. Our team didn’t find anything in the room to be especially difficult or mind bending, but there is indeed a lot of it. Which is great! All four of us had plenty to do. 60Out has an offer where one player in your group plays for free on or near their birthday (which our foursome has taken advantage of a bunch this year), and this game was a real birthday treat. Out of 31 games played, this gets a solid #6, and it’s found its way into my heart as my current favorite at any 60Out location. 

How to book this room yourself: Visit https://www.60out.com/los-angeles/rooms/grandmas-masterplan