Escape Room Reviews: The Villain's Lair

Company: Exit Game
Room: The Villain’s Lair
Date Played: 2/4/17
Player Count: 2, more would have been better
Success:  Failure! Even with a bit of extra time!

Premise: You're in jail in North Korea, and it only gets worse from there!

Immersion: The jail is the most jail-like jail I've been pretend jailed in, and I guess I don't know that the rest of it is not what it's like in North Korea. The video introduction is... let's say a little broad.

Highlights: The set decoration and production design is quite nice. The glowy hall shown in promo photos on their website was fun to work through. There are several elaborate puzzles that would be fun for a larger group to work through.

Lowlights: We were unattended and/or forgotten during our game. Early on, something got stuck and after no response to our call for hints I straight up cheated to fix it with something I was carrying. At the end, time expired and nobody came to let us out. We weren't discovered until a host came in to start the next group. (Granted, we probably should have used those extra minutes more effectively to finish the escape, but it was kind of a confusing situation, and unclear whether the game was still functional.) 

Exit Game always checks players with a metal detector before letting them play. The first time we encountered this, I thought it was fake. This time it wasn't, but I don't know what the point of it really is. I feel pretty strongly that I would prefer to be treated like an adult at any company I visit, and trusted not to take videos or whatever. 

And Finally:  We sort of played this game out of desperation, trying to find an opening somewhere at the last minute. We were fixed on Exit Game because we liked visiting them in the pass, and we had been given a free ticket. Based on their website, this would have been the last game on their list we would have picked, and at least that intuition was correct - it wasn't a great time for us. I don't personally recommend this room, but I have and still do recommend Exit Game to others, and I look forward to trying some of their other rooms in the future. Out of 18 rooms played, I'm ranking this one #16.

How to book this room yourself: Visit https://www.theexitgame.com/m4---the-villians-lair
(We were given one free ticket at a SoCal Escape Room Enthusiast meet up event.)