Escape Room Reviews: Great Redemption

Company: The Great Redemption
Room: The Great Redemption
Date Played: 9/17/16
Player Count: 2, which was plenty
Success:  Success!

Premise: "Great Redemption is a new fun entertainment concept based on the classic “Room Escape Game” now popular in many countries around the globe. Alex your friend framed you, You are under arrest in a police station and blamed for stealing $1-Million. There is one hour until the interrogator is coming back, get the money and all the evidence and escape from the police station!" —Great Redemption website

Immersion: Basically none. On a scale of '1 - Office Park' to '10 - Actual police station, which, admittedly, is kind of office-like' this rates a '2 - Hanging out in your friend's mostly finished basement.' At least there were bars on the cell door. Also, for no discernible reason, this is a low-light room, with one working flashlight provided.

Highlights: There were some puzzles, and some pieces of tech (by which I mean actual everyday technology, not RFID and Arduino-powered magical objects) that I've never seen used in another escape room. Black light use was pretty good! (I'm thinking of making Black Light: it's own section of the review...)  Keeper never called us on the radio.

Lowlights: The production quality.  The frankly excessive cluing. To give an imaginary example, not from the game, even though I totally could just post up the whole thing because there was no waiver of any kind (I mean, I wouldn't, I'm just saying, no waiver!), imagine if you were in a game where you broke into a bank, and you get down to the huge vault door, and someone has left a sign on the door saying 'The combination is weight of the last three U.S. Presidents' and also someone has left a booklet with all of the weights of U.S. Presidents on the floor, and the last three are highlighted. And also every other lock in the bank has a sign nearby. It takes perfectly good Aha! puzzles (the ones where you make a cognitive leap, however great or small) and turns them into process puzzles (the ones where you have to turn a crank 3 times until it's done.)

And Finally:   I left this one feeling pretty conflicted. I feel like I'm rooting for them, but I can't tell if the muddled design and poor execution are clues that this room is a kind of cash-grab knock off of a proper room, or the above elements plus the novel fun parts just demonstrate a lack of ability or resources.  I wonder, as I often do about movies, who the intended audience of this room might be. Who is this room for? It's not a good fit for a first-timer, who will be put off by the general chintziness of the whole thing and never come back to see a top-notch room. It's not really for the experienced player either - we're less than a dozen games in and blew the leaderboard times out of the water (as did the couple in front of us. And neither of us were added to the board, which I assume is another kind of ruse).

We found this game because it was available very inexpensively on Groupon, which was welcome after last week's expensive trip to the Escape Hotel. And to be fair, it did give us a little bit of that escaping-from-a-thing fix. So while I can't really recommend it to anyone, maybe who a room like this is for is... me!

A few methods used in this room are a) in my opinion, somewhat lazy and could be replaced by something that gets the same information across in a smarter way, and b) exactly the same as those we saw in use last week at Witchcraft.

Out of 10 rooms visited, I'm ranking this one #8. 

How to book this room yourself: Visit http://www.thegreatredemption.com and enjoy the auto-playing tunes!

Escape Room Reviews: Witchcraft / Room 1313

Company: Escape Hotel Hollywood
Room: Witchcraft
Date Played: 9/11/16
Player Count: 4, just barely!
Success:  Our most severe loss ever.

Premise: I think it’s that the townsfolk assume anyone who stays in hotel room 1313 is a witch, so they show up every ninety minutes or so and burn the occupants alive.

Immersion: I don’t know. It was pretty dark in there, so I guess that’s accurate to being indoors in the 1600s? A lot of the knick-knacks still had price tags on. I think we were expecting a game about witchcraft to feature magical objects pretty heavily, but this room had a ton of regular physical locks.

Highlights: The lobby procedure is the most involved and fancy of any company I’ve visited, and the passports are neat. 

Lowlights: First off, the low light. A ton of this room hinges on not being able to spot things easily because it's not your turn with the 'good' candle.

One piece of tech seemed to not be working. Calling for a hint either allowed the Keeper to bypass it for us, or it coincidentally suddenly started working again at that time. 

Our team suffered a massive failure of communication on this room for some reason. There's a huge red herring that completely snookered 3/4ths of our group, and left me feeling like I was playing alone as I collected a massive amount of other clues. Where I screwed up was in trying to get other members of the team to do the grunt work on one of the  puzzles for me (which made sense to me because it used an item they were familiar with and I had not examined) and instead nobody ever worked on it. 

Does the room have a rock with weird symbols painted on it that the GM later says isn't relevant to the game hidden anywhere: Yes, and it's really out of the way. I bet a lot of people don't find it. 

And Finally:   I think a lot about what it actually means when a company lists the difficulty of a room on their website. Difficult for who? The internet gives me the impression that most players in an escape room are playing their first room. Are the ratings different for "enthusiasts"? Where does ten rooms put me on the bell curve of player experience?  This room was rated ★★★★★ for difficulty on the Escape Hotel website, and maybe it earned that rating by wielding conventions against its players. Setting patterns and then breaking them in a kind of meta-puzzle. Or maybe it's just an overpriced escape room.  I think it will be a long time before I fill my passport with stamps for the other rooms. 

Out of 9 rooms played, I'm ranking this one #8. 

How to book this room yourself: Visit http://www.escapehotelhollywood.com/tracks/6/witchcraft

Escape Room Reviews: Mystery of the Red Dragon

Company: Amazing Escape Room Los Angeles
Room: Mystery of the Red Dragon
Date Played: 9/4/16
Player Count: 2, plus another group of 5!
Success:  Success! With unwanted hints.

Premise: As INTERPOL agents, it is our duty to steal a priceless statue from an art thief!

Immersion: The vibe was somewhat like a carnival or kids game show. This room is not plausibly the home or hideout of an old thief. 

Highlights: The room is packed with stuff to do. There’s a nice blend of conceptual and mechanical puzzles, and tons of physical locks. There’s a system that made me feel a little bit like we were earning points as we progressed, which was unusual but fun. 

The hint system was text delivered via monitors on the walls, which is accompanied by a noise taken from an educational film strip. I really liked this method of communication.

The video we were shown that outlined the rules was well produced. 

Lowlights: The booking website is not as clear as at some other games around town, and we would never have signed up for this game if we knew there was already a group of 5 playing. They were a sharp bunch, and totally prepared to steamroll any pair of gooves that they got stuck with. Maybe on a different day I could have sat back a little more and enjoyed watching how other people solve a room, but instead I felt like I had to battle to participate. There were things in this game which I don’t know where they came from, I don’t know how they were used, and I don’t know what using them did. It made my map* a little bit confusing. 

Our Keeper was like Clippy, offering unwanted advice. I think a perfect GM might provide unsolicited clues in the nick of time to keep the momentum going, but it’s really deflating to get a cluetelling you to focus on, say, a particular lock, while you’re in the act of walking your key across the room to that very lock.

Maybe worst blacklight use we've encountered?  (I'm going to call this not-a-spoiler. Maybe if a room didn't have a black light and I told you, then I'd be spoiling a fun surprise.)

There are buttons for opening doors that you are supposed to use that look exactly like the buttons on the emergency exit doors that end the game if you use them. This is bad design.

And Finally: Joining the other team was educational, at least. I think I scratch my puzzle-solving itch by grokking the solutions more than by physically turning the keys in the locks, but I found myself racing to be the one to turn the keys here just so that I could be the first to see what was inside a locked cabinet or drawer. Our group was so spread out (even in the small space) that the people who were calling out their discoveries weren’t hearing each other, and sometimes we got stuck on needing an object that another player had put in their pocket 5 minutes ago. 

I would rather understand everything in a room than set the record time. We didn't technically finish The Lab, but it was a more satisfying experience because I know what was going on. I bet there are some games out there for larger groups where this play style just doesn’t work.  

I have a lot of lowlights for this game, so I feel like I should emphasize that reviews are about my own experience. I think the best way for a reviewer to be valuable to a consumer is through a body of work and related experiences. There are film critics I never agree with, and their reviews are just as valuable as if we were peas in a pod, once I know that about them.  I think I would have really enjoyed this room if we'd played it as just a couple, or in our usual team of 4.  Such as it is, out of 8 rooms played, I'm rating this one #7.

How to book this room yourself: Visit https://amazingescaperoom.com/la-northridge/mystery-of-the-red-dragon/

*Obviously, I go home and draw a complete map of every escape room I play, with annotations for the objects, locations of the collectibles, notes about the flow of play and solutions. Obviously.

Escape Room Reviews: The Mystery of Senator Payne

Company: 60 Out
Room: The Mystery of Senator Payne
Date Played: 8/27/16
Player Count: 2, which was probably a little low.
Success:  Success! w/ hints

Premise: There's just 1 hour after the Senator's staff leaves the office and before he returns from his golf game, during which you need to break into his office and steal a copy of a bill he's sponsoring.

Immersion: The office... looks like an office! Except of course that the Senator has no computer or office supplies of any kind (of course, if he had, maybe I'd be carping about all the red herrings). Naturally, the further we got, the less plausible I found it to to believe that the Senator actually has time for any of the stuff we discovered.

Highlights: This is a very high tech room, and despite the constant presence of our friendly Keeper, apparently completely automated. These guys are great with magic objects. 

The puzzles here have a lot of variety in their methods, but mostly follow the form of the player needing to gain insight on to use objects together. In that way, this is probably room most like a point-and-click adventure game that we've played.

Lowlights: Our search skills were lacking on the day we played this one. For that reason and the ticket price, it would have been good to bring a couple of others along - showing up with two people means overpaying per person, but we'd heard good things about the company and were excited to try them out.  

The introductory video was not up to par with the video we just saw over at Exit Game. 

You'd think a US senator could afford to replace his old, beat-up paper goods once in a while. 

And Finally:  Our Keeper was very free with communicating with us during the game over the room's PA system. It never felt irritating like other games where the walkie talkie keeps wanting to give you hints. It was more like we were interacting with the narrator. It felt like he was a part of our team. (When he gave us our time at the end, he said it wasn't a terrible score for "a group of three.")

Regular locks provide clear goals. A room built on magic objects (that is, some combination of sensors, rfid tags, arduinos, you know, magic) puts everything in front of you as well, but you don't know it. The downside of this, I think, is that it creates a lopsided impression of the overall game.  You forget about the puzzles you breezed through, and mainly remember the sticking points that ate up the majority of your time. I guess maybe that's always true, but perhaps I feel it more in these situations?

Even though I found the second half of this game to be less enjoyable than the first half, I still thought the company seems really promising.  I'm looking forward to coming back to try their casino heist!  Out of 7 rooms played, I'm ranking this one #4.

How to book this room yourself: Visit https://www.60out.com/rooms/myster-of-senator-payne-escape-room

Escape Room Reviews: The Lab

One Saturday night with nothing much going on, with our usual room escape partners on vacation, we looked online, saw there was an escape room that nobody had booked any tickets for starting in an hour, and raced across town to a terrific adventure as a duo!

Company: Exit Game
Room: The Lab
Date Played: 8/20/16
Player Count: 2

Success:  Failure, but only barely. No hints.

Premise: I can't really say. I know it was vaguely Area 51 themed, but I'm not 100% sure who we were supposed to be or what exactly we were officially trying to do. Get in the room and then escape from it, I guess!

Immersion: Just enough to be fun. This was by far the biggest space we've been in, and the game took full advantage of it. Probably none of the objects in the room would really make sense in a military installation, but this game is immersive in the way a game of Laser Tag is immersive. Speaking of which, our flashlights were mounted on rubber handguns. We took two each!

Highlights: The space. It's really satisfying to get to move around as the game progresses instead of rotating to face the next wall of a small room. The watchword for the whole experience was "satisfying." There's a really well-designed part that punishes players if they choose to act like jerks or rewards them if they don't.  Since I considered the jerk behavior and then decided against it, this made me very happy.

The hint system was a button at the beginning of the game. Since this was a kind of spread-out area, the one time we were ready to press the button, it required us to backtrack through the space and we stumbled over the clue we were missing. No more need for a hint!

In my last review, The Will took top prize for best game intro.  A week later, this one is taking the prize for best explanation of the rules.  We were shown a video with some decent production value, decent jokes, and a good explanation of what's what.  

Lowlights: We got to the final puzzle but didn't actually escape. Either we missed the clue for the finale, or it's significantly more abstract than every single thing that came before it. When someone came to get us at the end, it seemed that either they weren't our GM, or if they were, they weren't really watching us.  

And Finally:   Of the escape room companies we've visited, Exit Game seemed the most like a real business. Our host, Remy, was far and away the most professional host we've encountered so far. There's a large lobby for some reason, even though there doesn't seem to be anything to do there, and there's a photo station that automatically emails you your photo after you take it. My earlier comparison to a Laser Tag... game? arena? parlor? Place you play laser tag, is probably apt here. It doesn't feel like a startup or someone's hobby.

This room says it can take 10 or 12 players at once. That seems like a crazy amount. We breezed through most of it with only 2 of us.  With 3 or 4, I'm sure we would have had enough extra eyes and hands to escape. With 12... by the time everyone travels from one area to another, whoever's in the lead would already be done and on to the next space. We didn't get out, but it felt like we saw everything, and my overall feelings toward this one are very positive. Since we're sort of new to escape rooms, it's great every time we enter one that's unlike anything we've seen before.

I recently discovered bestlaescaperooms.com, and I'm delighted to see this is their least favorite room at this location, because it was great fun. I'm looking forward to bringing more people and checking out The AI and the Sorcery School. Out of 6 rooms played, I'm ranking this one #2. 

How to book this room yourself: Visit http://www.theexitgame.com/m2-ch6g