Escape Room Review: The Castle

Company: Maze Rooms
Room: The Castle
Date Played: 8/8/15
Player Count: 4, which was perfect!
Success:  Success! No hints.

Premise: You are trapped in castle by evil wizard. 

Immersion: Our host seemed a little bit embarrassed by the premise. He sat us down to tell us "You are trapped in castle by evil wizard. It's me! I'm sorry!" and we were never able to decide whether this represented sheepishness about having to put a frame around the game we were about to play, or comic genius. Either way, it's how we've thought of the start of every game since. 

The room itself looked a lot more like rented office space than a medieval castle. Luckily, after a couple of minutes, this didn't really matter.  

Highlights: There was a lot to do, and a mixture of regular locks and neat gadgets. A lot of custom tech stuff, actually, but what each thing expected from us was fairly clear. There was more than one way to solve certain puzzles, which I thought was especially cool - if your group isn't good at puzzle type X, you might just discover while working on other things that there's a solution to the same problem available via puzzle type Z. 

Lowlights:  Not enough light! We had less lamps than players, which surely slowed things down a bit. One or two puzzles' solutions were hinted at by traces of previous players. One object was broken / falling apart. The mostly cool non-linear nature of some parts meant that we got ahead of ourselves and solved at least one thing before we discovered it was a puzzle. This wasn't a big problem, but it was definitely a question for our keeper afterwards. 

And Finally: This room will probably always sit on a special pedestal for me and my team because it was our first room. I think it was a great introduction. None of the lows would stop me from recommending this room to you. 

Out of 1 escape room played, The Castle ranks #1!

How to book this room for yourself: Visit http://la.mazerooms.com/quest/castle/