Escape Room Reviews: The Pharaoh's Curse

Company: The Hidden Passage
Room: The Pharaoh’s Curse
Date Played: 2/4/18
Player Count: 2, which is not enough.
Success:  Total failure!

Premise: Walking along one day you slip into some quicksand and find yourself in a spooky underground chamber! 

Immersion: A little bit of a mixed bag. The production design is fantastic. The rooms and walls and props look great, but there are a lot of digital keypads for ancient Egypt.

Highlights: A lot of care went into this room. The puzzles are pretty clever. The customer service was excellent.

Lowlights: The mix of ancient and modern set design. We skipped over some elements that seemed so off-theme that we didn’t initially think they were part of the game. I felt bad about accidentally opening a lock too soon and skipping over a couple of things. One other lowlight, of course, is losing by a lot. I felt new. (Except of course, our first few games when we were new were successes.)

And Finally:  Most of our group no-showed on us. Word on the street is that this room is large and has a lot to do, and is worth doing with a medium sized group. I'm sure this would have helped, and it's not Hidden Passage's fault (as far as I know). Playing as a duo, we weren’t even close to finishing. As we exited, I thought that maybe I had not seen enough of the room to give it a fair place on my list, but we succeed in rooms all the time as a couple, and I think the things that bugged me would still bug me if we won.  More than I regret losing, I regret squandering the opportunity to experience this game as it was meant to be played. Still, if I have to put a subjective number on it, I guess that out of 44 games played, I’d rank this at 35. 

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