Escape Room Reviews: The A.I.

Company: Exit Game
Room: The AI
Date Played: 9/30/17
Player Count: 2, but would work well with 3 or 4.
Success:  Success!

Premise: You’re visiting the apartment of your missing friend and his pet AI, a murderous, SHODAN-looking thing. 

Immersion: This room looks like someone should be shooting their webseries or Syfy original programming in it. Which is to say, it looks good but a little cheap, with a lot of colorful lighting. 

Highlights: This room has some cool tech interactions that are unlike anything I’ve seen before, including a take on virtual reality that isn’t what it sounds like. Certain things, like inserting the ‘cores,’ has a great sci-fi movie feel. Also, I like interacting with computers in escape rooms, and this game has a lot of opportunities for that.

Lowlights: We got caught up on search. The volume was very low and hearing our departed friend and his AI's taunts and hints was a little tough over the music. And customer service is always kind of a drag at Exit Game. There’s the silly metal detector thing they do, but more than that there's the sense that your game master isn’t paying attention. We called for a hint and the delivery system here was someone coming in after a couple of minutes and trying to offer advice without knowing where we were.

And Finally: I'm surprised that we don't do more rooms themed around being high-tech in some way. Maybe it's hard to pull off, or maybe we're more likely to naturally spot the shortcomings because we interact with touchscreens and computers and stuff a lot more often than Egyptian tombs. In any case, we'd been looking forward to checking this room out. For my money though, The Lab is still the room to beat at Exit Game. Out of 35 games played, I'm ranking this one #23. 

How to book this room yourself: Visit https://www.theexitgame.com/artificial-intelligence-la-escape

(and while you’re there, check out some of those photos. Particularly this one. This is exactly what I’m afraid of whenever I see a room that says it takes 8-12 players.)