Escape Room Reviews: Murder in the Old Manor House

Company: Escape Hunt Experience Cleveland
Room: Murder in the Old Manor House
Date Played: 12/27/16
Player Count: 3. One or two more would have been okay. 
Success:  Success!

Premise: There had been, at a stately manor home, what law enforcement professionals might refer to as "A Murder," and as those professionals, it is incumbent upon you to crack the case!

Immersion: Escape Hunt is a franchise, in this case built into a former big box appliance and electronics store, and as such their lobby and rooms feel very professional, but more in the 'game show' side of production design than 'actual spooky manor.' There is a scene that takes place 'outside,' which we don't see too often. Some of the puzzles are beyond belief as things that might 'really be there,' but don't feel out of place or wrong for a nice game.

Highlights: There is a lot to do in this game, and a variety of puzzles. A few clichés, (black light: ✓) but also some mechanisms I'd never seen before. As an introduction to this kind of puzzle gaming experience, it went over great with the first-timer in our group, who put together a bunch of solves. I don't recall ever being at a loss for what to work on next.

Lowlights: Because of a lousy previous experience where I refused to work a cypher, I put extra effort into taking one for the team and puzzling one out in this game. This wasn't super fun or super helpful. I don't have any particular complaints about the game itself.

And Finally:  I think a room like this one is a very solid baseline for what an escape game should be. I would recommend it to anyone looking to try this sort of thing out, or more experienced players looking for a solid fix of puzzling. The only reason I don't rate it higher is that while this game checks all the boxes, newer and fancier games are inventing new boxes and checking them. That is, innovating and elevating the form on the shoulders of games like this one. Out of 15 games played, I'm ranking this one #7.

Also, I'm not sure we really did much in the way of catching the killer... 

How to book this room yourself: Visit http://cleveland.escapehunt.com

Escape Room Reviews: The Clockwork Caper

Company: Perplexity Games
Room: The Clockwork Caper
Location: Cleveland, OH
Date Played: 12/27/17
Player Count: 3
Success:  Unprecedented success!

Premise: Sneak into the lab of inventor Patrick O'Malley and discover the secrets of his new machine for your boss, Thomas Edison!

Immersion: The production design of the room looks a little bit thrown together, but if anything, it's probably too clean for a real inventor's workshop.  

Highlights: We supposedly set a speed record and impressed our GM with how quickly we escaped. (I have this theory that the Escape Room GM Handbook tells you to tell every group how uncommonly smart, speedy, and handsome your team is, and if necessary how you came *this close* to solving it!) 

The non-linear design let our group split up and to each work with separate puzzles.

Lowlights: 
This room feels very short. By my reckoning, and by reckoning I mean carefully-drawn-after-the-fact map of the room, The Clockwork Caper has about half as many items / points of interest as almost any other game i've played. I was definitely surprised that the ending was, in fact, the ending.

There were a couple of mechanical puzzles that we probably solved more through brute force than actually understanding the underlying systems. 

And Finally:   What really drew me to this game was that the rooms seemed to be designed to have a connection to Cleveland history. There was a moment in the end game that really missed out on the chance to drive that connection home. 

We felt good about ourselves for cruising through a room, but unsatisfied with the experience overall, leading to my first time playing 2 rooms in one day.  Out of 14 games played, I would rank this one #10.

How to book this room yourself: Visit https://www.perplexitygames.com

Escape Room Reviews: Titanic

Special note: we were beta testers for this room, which was not yet open to the public at the time that we played. 

Company: 60
Date Played: 9/22/16
Player Count: 2, which is enough
Success:  Success!
Premise: It’s the Titanic. Pretty much all it does is sink. Get out of there!

Immersion: At the beginning of the game, things felt very urgent indeed, but that feeling fades fairly quickly.  The set is very nice, although a couple of items seemed a little anachronistic (and may have been replaced after the beta test). The background screams of drowning passengers started to sound like people enjoying a roller coaster after a little while. 

Highlights: The fun factor on this room is really high.  As I mention with every review of a 60 Out room, they're tops at magical objects, but the non-magic puzzles are also pretty clever. Although there are a couple of standard locks, a lot of what this room has to offer is much more tactile and involving. 

Lowlights: As with the Ghost Ship, we got really stuck on something fairly early where we had the right idea, but the thing we wanted to do didn't seem possible. We got past it eventually, but not without a) asking for a hint that didn't help because we already worked out what we thought the thing did, and b) applying WAY more force than I would have thought necessary. 

Some of the props were a little subpar or even broken for a room that isn't subject to public consumption yet, but I'm confident that all of those issues will be sorted out by the time the room is open to the world. 

And Finally:   Hey, this was the second time in two days that we found a [XXX] in a [XXX] on a [XXX] in a room by 60 Out!

If I were clicking around on a company's website, trying to pick a room to play, I think it would have been a long time before I settled in on a Titanic-themed room, but the fact is that this is my favorite 60 Out room to date.  In contrast to Ghost Ship, this room has an unusually low amount of things, but they are used in ways that are mostly more concrete and satisfying.

Out of 13 escape rooms played, I'm going to rank this one #4. 

How to book this room yourself: Visit https://www.60out.com/rooms/titanic

Escape Room Reviews: Ghost Ship

Special note: we were beta testers for this room, which was not yet open to the public at the time that we played. 

Company: 60 Out Escape Rooms
Room: Ghost Ship
Date Played: 9/21/16
Player Count: 2, which is not enough
Success:  Success! …eventually!

Premise: You’re in the hold of the ship of… ghost pirates? You need to escape and break that spell!

Immersion: It's very ship-like! Really great looking wooden construction abounds. There were a couple of objects that I don't know what they were supposed to be in-fiction or out, but that's more of fridge-logic than anything to think about in the moment.

Highlights: This room is huge!  It might not by physically larger than The Lab, but I've never seen a room with this much stuff to do. Most rooms I've played have roughly 25 things*, and this is a room with over 40. 

Some very cool magic objects - this is the top company for magic objects. 

Lowlights: Not every magic object was entirely functional on our playthrough - again, it was a beta test, and the purpose of testing is to work out the bugs, so I don't hold this against them or expect that you'll encounter the same. But still - sometimes we had to have GMs come in to fix things.

We got really stuck on a puzzle where we tried the correct solution right away but for some reason it didn't work, so we ruled it out as an option.  Wasting so much time fruitlessly knocking our heads against this particular wall was bad for morale.

And Finally:   This room reminded me in a few ways of the other 60 Out room I've played, Senator Payne. The first half is mostly physical interactions with ordinary objects, which I found more satisfying than the second half.  

Playing this game as a couple (our GM said the recommended group size would be 6-8) and as testers, it took us almost exactly 80 minutes to escape, and I think I was somewhat escape-room-fatigued by the end of it. With a proper group working out the non-linear segments as a team, and the room itself firing on all cylinders, Ghost Ship would be an excellent room for a medium or large-sized team.

Out of an even dozen escape rooms played, I'm ranking this one #5

How to book this room yourself: Visit https://www.60out.com/rooms/ghost-ship

*Things, in this case, are objects you can interact with: clues, keys, locks, points of interest, anything I would mark down on my map**

**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: Occam's Apartment

Company: Evil Genius Escape Rooms
Room: Occam’s Apartment
Date Played: 9/18/16
Player Count: 2, just enough!
Success:  Success!

Premise: Bill Occam was dead. They said it was open-shut: textbook suicide. While you didn’t agree, you just wanted to put this nasty chapter behind you. Just clean out his apartment and move on with your life.

Immersion: At the moment you're immersed in it, it's wonderful. It's a ratty old apartment. Your friend was a bit of a paranoid, and it's not absurd to think he might have been locking up some of his secrets. The music is light and a perfect accent to the goings-on, and there are several scenes contained within that feel very cinematic and exciting.

Highlights: For two people, there's a lot to do in here.  Even though on paper the room is fairly straightforward, there's a lot of exploring to do in order to get started. It's mostly traditional locks, but not an excessive amount of them. Progress generally felt earned and satisfying.

The music is really well-used.  I noticed at least a couple of tracks that almost blend in to the background, and they weren't movie scores I recognized. 

Our host did a fantastic job, and the in-game hint system - our deceased friend's secret contact - was far and away the best example I've experienced of the GM offering hints or comments that we didn't ask for but didn't let the air out of our tires. 

Lowlights: I randomly opened a complicated puzzle by accident while exploring, and we couldn't follow up on its contents because we didn't have the other requisite items - I'm sure this is more of an 'oh no!' moment for the GM than it's any real problem for me though. 

The apartment does not have its own bathroom, and therefore: no razor.

There was a disposable item in the apartment which I kind of wish I'd kept instead of leaving behind. 

And Finally:   After several encounters with lackluster games, we were starting to feel ready to take a break from room escapes for a bit, and we only happened on this one because of their opening-week sale. It was quite the stroke of luck for us! I liked the game, the space, the hosts (and not just because one of them said he recognized me as a stand-up – I got to wondering afterward though, if saying "hey, don't I recognize you from something" is just good customer service here in LA...) 

Knowing how new the place was, I felt bad anytime I accidentally or thoughtlessly let something drop to the floor or get treated roughly.  The room contains some paper items that I'm sure they're going to have to replace regularly, but I commend the owners for going that route instead of less-immersive laminated slabs. 

Out of 11 escape rooms played, I'm really happy to call this one #1, and I'm looking forward to the planned continuations of the story in their upcoming rooms. I both want to make friends with the owners and also never make friends with them so I can enjoy their future rooms as a complete fan of their work.

How to book this room yourself: Visit http://www.evilgeniusescaperooms.com/our-rooms/