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Reviews

Pins & Needles Tattoo Parlor

Pins & Needles Tattoo Parlor

The Escape Ventures - Clearwater [prev. The Exit Games]

  • Escape room
  • IRL

𓆜𓋘𓄁 𓊛𓇙𓋸𓌤𓌥 𓌦 𓅐𓆢 𓆣 𓀉𓆤 𓆥 𓅑𓆘 𓆙 𓅒𓄙 𓄚 𓄛 𓅓𓃺 𓃻 𓅔 𓅕 𓃕 𓃖 𓃗 𓎷 𓄁𓎸𓅖 𓅽 𓅾 𓅿𓅗 𓅘 𓇆 𓇇𓅙 𓅚 𓁵 𓁶𓂵 𓂶𓃝𓋲 𓋳𓀬 𓅛𓁃 𓂺𓅜 �𓅝𓃄 �𓄁𓅞𓂙 𓅟𓂿 𓆜𓋘𓄁 𓊛𓇙𓋸𓌤𓌥 𓌦 𓅐𓆢 𓆣 𓀉𓆤 𓆥 𓅑𓆘 𓆙 𓅒𓄙 𓄚 𓄛 𓅓𓃺 𓃻 𓅔 𓅕 𓃕 𓃖 𓃗 𓎷 𓄁𓎸𓅖 𓅽 𓅾 𓅿𓅗 𓅘 𓇆 𓇇𓅙 𓅚 𓁵 𓁶𓂵 𓂶𓃝𓋲 𓋳𓀬 𓅛𓁃 𓂺𓅜 𓂨𓅝𓃄 𓄁𓅞𓂙 𓅟𓂿

Cornstalkers: Lost in the Maize

Cornstalkers: Lost in the Maize

The Escape Ventures - Orlando Waterford Lakes

  • Escape room
  • IRL
I’m going to keep this short. The overall experience could be a bit more cohesive. I wish the middle section was a bit more interesting. I wish it had a much better ending. But this game is amazing. It is absolutely amazing. And the work your gamemaster has to put into it to make it work is even more amazing. Go experience it. TEV Ranking: 1. Orlando: Cornstalkers 2. Clearwater: Servants of Sleight 3. Clearwater: Pins & Needles 4. Orlando: Arctic Storm 5. Port Charlotte: Phantom FIles 6. Port Charlotte: Click ‘N Glitch 7. Port Charlotte: Nightfall 8. Orlando: Bros for Life 9. Orlando: Neighborhood Watcher (gap in quality) 10. International Drive: Secrets of the Swamp 11. Orlando: Satirical Miracle (gap in quality) 12. Orlando: Outage 13. International Drive: Bunker Busters
Dark Lullaby

Dark Lullaby

Escape Artist Greenville - Hampton Station

  • Escape room
  • IRL
An amazing horror game (horror advisory below, it’s not too scary) that combines a beautifully dark atmosphere,strong scare moments that are all very different from each other, and great puzzles all strung together with a cohesive overarching story that expands beyond the nightmare world the dream is set in (and that’s not even talking about the game’s role in the Chimera Corp Saga as a whole). This is a horror game, but I wouldn't say it’s prohibitively scary for most players, mostly because of the clear distinction between points to work on puzzles and points to work on scares. That’s not to say you won’t be scared in the puzzle points (you’re still in a pretty creepy atmosphere, though I never found it too offputting) or that the scares are dialed back at all. The only horror aspect I wanted more from was the main character you interact with. They are almost always played comedically (relying on a certain phobia I guess I don’t have to be scary. A lot of people will find this character scary though). Also for such a cohesive game, this particular character is only tangentially related to the main plot and feels out of place. The gameplay dispersed between scares are great, tying in elements of the world, elements of the overall story, and even evoking some fears (I didn’t know I had) through just the contents of them. They’re also all really fun. Just like how they didn’t let the puzzling take away from the quality of the horror, they also didn’t let the horror take away from the quality of the puzzling. As I keep mentioning, the game has a pretty cohesive story that gives meaning behind both your own actions and meaning behind the nightmare itself. And both of these plotlines are separate from the main horror things going on. It’s really impressive that it manages to make both of these things very prevalent (in fact, there’s so much going on that until I wrote this I forgot these plotlines were even part of this game). And if you’re playing the Chimera Corp Saga experience (which you should), this story gets you invested in the characters and world more than I even realized while playing it. The saga is emotionally and dramatically anchored by this game while still succeeding as the standalone horror game of the trilogy. And then you get to the finale scene. Wow. Everything horror and story is perfect here. The puzzles are at their most phobia-triggering, the atmosphere is at its most foreboding with some great sound they were saying they recently added, the scares are at their scariest, and yet on top of these climatic scares you still have a satisfying conclusion to your own story and an explanation of the dream itself. I love this game, and I came out of it wishing nothing more than that there was more of it. I have never been more blown away and had as much to say with the quality of a 60 minute game. If you think you can hold up with a mildly to moderately creepy atmosphere and a handful of strong (though not unexpected) scares, go play this game, preferably as part of Chimera Corp Saga. (Chimera Corp Saga review under my Help Wanted review) Escape Artist Greenville Ranking 0. Chimera Corp Saga 1. Dark Lullaby 2. Castle Fluffendor 3. Help Wanted (gap in quality) 4. Starlight Motel (big gap in quality) 5. Yuletide Magic 6. Classified (big gap in quality) 7. Dr. Fratelli’s Cabin 8. Inventor's Enigma
40 Thieves

40 Thieves

MindTrap Escape Room - Temecula

  • Escape room
  • IRL
This is such a well put-together experience. Like, there’s a few puzzles that have definite gameplay issues or some that feel a little too simple and lazy and feel like they were just tacked on. But every puzzle feels naturally part of the games story, every little detail feels like a natural part of the world, and despite the game being a traditional escape room keeps managing to pull off surprising effects that kinda blow my mind that they were made on an escape room budget and not on a Disney/Universal ride budget. This is probably the game that feels the most lived-in out of any non-actor game I have played. Honestly, I just kinda wish there was more.
Robotopia

Robotopia

Omescape - Sunnyvale

  • Escape room
  • IRL
Wow. Just wow. This game more than justifies it’s feature film length time by feeling like a feature film in itself with a 3-Act structure that you get to be the main character in! This game’s scope is absolutely massive and creates a world that really feels lived in with limited space and only grows throughout the experiences and actually makes you feel like a part of it. Both puzzles and setting evolved throughout the entire game while staying delightful and occasionally hilarious. The only issues this game has comes from it’s overall gameplay as the unique puzzles feel easy and somewhat short-lived with most of the game’s difficulty coming from repetitive and sometimes overly-difficult memory puzzles. There are way too many memory-based puzzles in this game, especially in the 2nd half. Regardless this game is one of the absolute best games I have ever played!!!
Neighborhood Watcher

Neighborhood Watcher

The Escape Ventures - Orlando Waterford Lakes

  • Escape room
  • IRL
Like all of the best The Escape Ventures games, it is an all around fun game with decent puzzles, amazing set design, and of course really fun interactions with the game master. Our game master in Neighborhood Watcher gave what is probably the singular best performance we’ve seen in an Escape Room. The Cornstalkers game master had more to do, but this game had by far the best acted singular character we’ve seen in any Escape Room. He is amazing. And this entire game is amazing… until the ending. This is because, well, it barely feels like there is an ending. This game feels like 2/3s of a really good game. It builds up tension masterfully and does nothing with it. It is a great experience that I don’t want to spoil anymore about, but be sure not to set that high of an expectation for where the story is going. (I would like to think that I’m not just biased toward 90 minute games, but the fact that Cornstalkers and Arctic Storm worked so much for me and this one didn’t (as much) specifically due to its length suggests otherwise.) TEV Ranking: 1. Orlando: Cornstalkers 2. Clearwater: Servants of Sleight 3. Clearwater: Pins & Needles 4. Orlando: Arctic Storm 5. Port Charlotte: Phantom FIles 6. Port Charlotte: Click ‘N Glitch 7. Port Charlotte: Nightfall 8. Orlando: Bros for Life 9. Orlando: Neighborhood Watcher (gap in quality) 10. International Drive: Secrets of the Swamp 11. Orlando: Satirical Miracle (gap in quality) 12. Orlando: Outage 13. International Drive: Bunker Busters
Nevermore

Nevermore

Nocturne Adventures

  • Escape room
  • IRL
A beautifully presented, theatrical, but mostly standard escape room that is really good in every aspect. The puzzles and set design are both great… and I really don’t have much more to say about either. They are really good but just not that memorable. (Signposting) There are a couple really memorable things though. First of all, this game has the best signposting I’ve seen in a game. This game ties puzzles and locked objects together perfectly. It’s a minor thing but done perfectly here. (Story Interludes) By far the most memorable moments are the story interludes, specifically some later interactions with a character. The set looks nice normally, but these interludes add some new layers of tech to the set that are really impressive, especially when the character is around. Even when the character’s not there there’s a really cool figure, one of the only of its kind I’ve seen in an Escape Room. Now I wasn’t a huge fan of the story itself as it felt a bit vaguely told and didn’t make sense to me. I absorbed the room more as just an homage to Poe with a loose story, but the ending made it clear that there was a deeper meaning I wasn’t getting. I do have a low attention span with stories like these, so it’s likely a me issue, but a lot of these story scenes are mostly just audio and I wish there was always some kind of visual representation of the story. That’s why any of the scenes with the character are the highlight. They’re really well-performed and visually represent the mood of the story (that I still don’t really understand). The character scenes become even more impressive after learning how this company is run. That’s because there is only one couple running this company as this company is in their basement. We had possibly the best post-game conversation we’ve ever had with them and ended up talking for a full hour. From that conversation, we learned how elaborately this game is run. Both of them have very specific roles they have to do over and over again every time this game is ran. But I say that these parts of the game are most memorable because I found everything else just kind of unmemorable. I’ve played a lot of theatrical, actor-infused games, and this is just another very polished one. I guess it’s mostly because of really raised expectations, mostly from its Terpeca placement. I set expectations for something really big and expansive, but of course it’s not that because it’s in a house (and is in fact the smaller game they have here). But that’s what makes this company special: it’s a beautifully polished, intimate, theatrical game in a house. As long as you go in with those expectations, this is an amazing game in every aspect and I think any players of any experience level in the area should go out to Hickory to play it (especially if they’re more of a Poe fan than I am).
Operation Arctic Storm: The Final Meltdown

Operation Arctic Storm: The Final Meltdown

The Escape Ventures - Orlando Waterford Lakes

  • Escape room
  • IRL
Like all of the best The Escape Ventures games, it is an all around fun game with decent puzzles, amazing set design, and of course really fun interactions with the game master. This game will have you exploring all of an Arctic research center, a location I never knew I needed to explore until after playing it. And I really mean ALL of an Arctic research center; this game has you cover a lot of ground with every room feeling very different from each other. The general story is fun and the character you (albeit, briefly) interact with is very entertaining, but there was another presence in the story that I wish showed up a lot more because they felt very tacked on. There was also one scene that looked beautiful but relied on really specific information in too large of a space. Other than that, I really have no issues with the game. It’s just a near-perfect 90 minute experience. TEV Ranking: 1. Orlando: Cornstalkers 2. Clearwater: Servants of Sleight 3. Clearwater: Pins & Needles 4. Orlando: Arctic Storm 5. Port Charlotte: Phantom FIles 6. Port Charlotte: Click ‘N Glitch 7. Port Charlotte: Nightfall 8. Orlando: Bros for Life 9. Orlando: Neighborhood Watcher (gap in quality) 10. International Drive: Secrets of the Swamp 11. Orlando: Satirical Miracle (gap in quality) 12. Orlando: Outage 13. International Drive: Bunker Busters
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