Escape Room Reviews: Alice in Wonderland

Company: 60Out
Room: Alice in Wonderland
Date Played: 1/21/18
Player Count: 6, which was too many.
Success:  Success!

Premise: It’s a room escape with a bunch of Alice in Wonderland stuff! Alice has been accused of a crime, and if you can’t clear her name, well… then it’s off with her head!™

Immersion: I mean, I didn’t feel like I was in Wonderland. The production design of this game was of the typically good quality of 60Out, and falls pretty solidly into the ‘game show’ style. There are a couple of locks uncharacteristic of 60Out and unlikely to exist in Wonderland.

Highlights: The first section has the best interactions. Everyone in our group seemed pretty pleased with the process of making a cup of tea.

Lowlights: Our game had a show-stopping bug. We stood around through multiple reboots and ultimately had to end the game. Aside from that, there’s a section that seems to involve a surprising amount of random guessing and a lot of unsolicited advice from the GM. The flow of story events seems kind of clunky - I wonder if there were last-minute changes made after the game was built. 

And Finally:  Our group is lucky enough to have gained a couple of members recently, but this was not the right room to bring the whole family. It doesn’t have enough space or things to do to keep 6 people happy. Even without the room breaking down, I don’t think this would have ranked very highly for me among the 60 Out canon. Out of 43 games played, I’m ranking it at #34

How to book this room yourself: Visit https://www.60out.com/los-angeles/rooms/alice-in-wonderland

Angry Pipefitters Union

Comedy Central offers the whole archive of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart online, which makes this as good a time as any to share with you one of my very favorite jokes, the second story in this segment.

I just read The Daily Show (The Book) and started visiting some of the clips referred to in the book like the Alphabet Game and this disastrous interview – I'm surprised that neither the publisher, nor their interns, nor an enterprising netizen* has put together a full list of links to everything referenced. Maybe it was on their already-lapsed website. I'm pretty sure that compiling such a list myself is not a good use of my time.

*I understand the modern term is probably "redditor."

#2,417: All the Money in the World

The Post - ★★★☆☆
You know how in between Avengers movies, Joss Whedon ran off and made a little movie in his backyard? He got his friends together and they shot a Shakespeare play? This is that movie for Steven Spielberg. It’s timely, and interesting, and still looks for all the world like a Steven Spielberg movie, but it’s one he bashed out with his friends in between their day jobs of making huge blockbusters. You know, to relax.

All the President's Men - ★★★☆☆
The Post is like the Rogue One of Washington Post movies. So naturally we had to go home and put this on. Ed Bradlee really aged in those couple of years.

All the Money in the World - ★★★☆☆
I am wrong all the time about what movies awards show voters like, but I think I’d give this a nomination for cinematography in addition to the spite-noms for Christopher Plummer.

It would be so interesting for the original version of the movie to leak one day and do some comparisons.

Also, the movie sells itself short with that weird last chunk pasted in from a Taken movie.

A Show Like This

This is my favorite part of World of Tomorrow part 2.

Escape Room Reviews: Labyrinth

Company: Trapped! Escape Room (Cleveland)
Room: The Labyrinth
Date Played: 12/27/17
Player Count: 3
Success:  Success! Sort of.

Premise: Stuck in a labyrinth! Nobody gets out of those. Most get eaten by the minotaur!* *There is no minotaur

Immersion: This room is built on the strength of quite a bit of custom woodworking, probably just like the labyrinth of myth. Unlike that labyrinth however, this one is not a maze of twisty passages. It has a little bit of a rec room feel, perhaps due to the lighting. 

Highlights: This company really roots for the players. Our GM loaded us up with some big hints on the way in, and towards the end there are multiple warnings about a puzzle that can only be attempted once. When something between my flu-addled brain and the sheer, call of the void curiosity led me to touch something I should not have, another GM came in and reset the game so we could try again. And again. And again.  

Lowlights: A lot of the custom props and sets have taken a beating over the months or years of customers playing with them. I don’t have a term for it, but we definitely passed at least one puzzle based on one of two choices looking much more worn down. Unsolicited hints and a couple of cliché elements are minor nitpicks.

And Finally:  It might be the cold talking, but I felt less like I was solving this game than just putting my head down and lumbering through. Wooden pieces that needed to be jiggled and coaxed into place felt like fudging the combinations instead of clean and correct answers. And that ending. I appreciate them taking care of us because it would be unsatisfying to get to the end of the game and do the wrong thing, lose, and have to leave. But since all that happens when you get it right is the GM comes in and you have to leave, the choice doesn’t have much weight. Out of 42 games played, I'm ranking this one at #29.

 How to book this room yourself: Visit https://www.trappedcle.com/room/the-labyrinth/