Escape Room Reviews: The Bunker

Company: Room Escape Live
Room: The Bunker
Date Played: 11/1/15
Player Count: 4

Success:  Success! With a hint or two.

Premise: Some military guy launched a nuke and then killed himself, so go through his office and find a way to stop it!  (Not strictly an escape, you could walk out at any time, but that won’t stop the missile launch!)

Immersion: Sufficient. I mean, it doesn't make any sense that this guy would have so many padlocks in his office. How would he get anything done? On a scale of '1 - Office Park' to '10 - Actual office in a missile silo' I'd say this gets a '6 - Set of a Game Show,' which was great.

Highlights: The main prop and all the things it gets used for is a lot of fun. There are a couple of multi-step puzzles that also stood out. This room always had plenty of stuff for the four of us to be searching or doing. So much so that we had to debrief after to make sure we all knew what all had transpired. We solved the dexterity puzzle (we're learning that there's always a dexterity puzzle!) that the minder told us most people don't solve. (Apparently they use a hint instead.) 

Lowlights: Kind of a lot of the same kind of regular locks. We got hung up in the beginning on a searching failure. 

And Finally:   We had a great time in this room, and we reached the very cinematic conclusion. However, our minder didn't stop the soundtrack, so the bomb still went off while we were taking victory photos and chatting, which was a good laugh. Not every object in the room was part of the game, but it felt like everything was 'in-bounds' and explorable. Fun gadgets, clear objectives, cool set. You would need a minimum of two people to physically accomplish the tasks in this game, but our foursome kept plenty busy.

Out of 2 escape rooms played, The Bunker is #1!

How to book this room yourself: Visit http://losangeles.roomescapelive.com/reservation/index/game/bunker

DDMTA Big News Drops!

You want your big news? I've got your big news!

Diani & Devine Meet the Apocalypse has been selected as one of the ten flagship films of the 2016 Austin Film Festival! This is where the movie will – at last! – be hatched unto the world!

Here's an Entertainment Weekly story about it, and please enjoy yesterday's post for the official trailer!

DDMTA Trailer Drops!

So like I sometimes talk about, Diani and Devine Meet The Apocalypse is this movie I helped to produce, and it's actually good, and it's actually coming out soon. Here's the full trailer. 

Find out more at DDMTA.com!  It's a good time to find out more because BIG SECRET NEWS is coming tomorrow!

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/

Set List is coming! To The Pack!

Coming soon to a theater near you (as long as you live in Los Angeles), it's Set List at The Pack!

The Pack is LA's hot new comedy theater, built on sketch and improv and the blood of Miles Stroth.

Set List is a comedy show format invented by Troy Conrad in which stand-ups are shown words and phrases that are largely nonsense, and then they perform comedy based on that nonsense as though it were their polished and honed material.

Hosted and booked by Jason Van Glass (who acquired Troy's blessing), produced by me, and written by the two of us, Set List at the Pack is the newest addition to the Gangbusters! conglomerate of comedy enterprises. 

Join us every Thursday night at 10:30, at The Pack Theater, where every show will feature several booked comedians we hope will do a great job, and several randomly drawn audience members who we really hope will do a great job!