Treasure IslandBrain Games Escape RoomEscape roomIRLHands down the best escape room we have ever done. Incredibly detailed and impressive set design, and fun and creative puzzles that require you to use a mix of logic, creativity, and manual dexterity. Lots of fun details and Easter eggs. We were not expecting the sheer size and scope of the overall experience and would definitely have moved more quickly in the first room had we known! Our GM allowed us to go a few minutes over to finish which we appreciated. Would recommend playing with at least three people as it became a bit challenging with two due to some of the puzzle designs requiring being spaced out to solve.
TombstoneMaze Rooms - West LAEscape roomIRLOur group of 4 has a serious bone to pick with this room and our GM. The GMs are running multiple rooms at once and in our experience, didn’t seem to be paying close attention to what was going on in our room, to the point that we got locked out of half of the experience for a significant period that affected our progress and final time. One of the puzzles to unlock an area malfunctioned and we kept asking aloud (trying to prompt our GM) if it was supposed to be unlocked, but it wasn’t until we were aimlessly wandering around nearly 10 minutes later after maxing out all the other possible puzzles that they finally noticed and guided us through how to re-trigger the puzzle to unlock the area we should already have been in. We were super upset because we went into the experience actively discussing in front of our GM how we planned to try and get a competitive time and get on the leaderboard, and due to the technical issue/glitch and lack of GM intervention, not only were we just short, but unlocking the area at our original time would have allowed us to cut out overall time in half. All in all it’s a shame because the set design is fun, but we had such a negative experience that it left a bad taste in our mouths.
Titanic60Out - HHLAEscape roomIRLThis room left the two of us feeling lukewarm. The atmosphere and set design was top notch and immersive, but the puzzles were lackluster and simple. Like many other reviewers note, there is a built-in hint system that cannot be disabled. It provides increasingly obvious hints (or sometimes, the answer) for puzzles while you are actively working on them, which we found irritating and distracting. At times, you have to listen to it to be led to the next puzzle, since there isn’t a natural progression between each stage. The actual design of the individual puzzles doesn’t challenge you to think through a solution; it’s often a hint guiding you to a cipher or a chart. We also felt like the story lacked clarity, as it was unclear to us who we were in the “crew” or what our overall goal was (besides to escape ourselves). All in all, we would recommend this room to first-timers who want to get a feel for how an escape room works, or to people playing with kids, but not to folks looking for challenging or creative gameplay. It’s also hard to justify the high cost of this room since for us it went pretty quickly.
The Sword of Hattori HanzoBack In Time Escape Rooms - Harbor CityEscape roomIRLNot our favorite room from Back in Time. Set design was pretty minimal and the story was thin. The puzzles were clever and fun, but we were surprised at how quickly we finished and wish there had been a few more.
Blackbeard's Lost TreasureBack In Time Escape Rooms - East TorranceEscape roomIRLFantastic room! We were four people (two of whom were first timers) which felt like a good number. Very creative hint mechanism, fun set design and puzzles, and a satisfying array of puzzle types. Beware that if you play on medium difficulty, there are a few built-in set pieces in the room that you’ll be expecting to use that won’t come up.
Bank HeistEscape Room Palm SpringsEscape roomIRLPlayed with a group of 8. There are a LOT of puzzles in this room and while they aren’t necessarily challenging, the quantity makes a bigger group (probably at least 4) ideal. The set was functional and fun, but for a bank, it lacked a lot of the types of interactive technology we were expecting. There are a LOT of locks to get through and the gameplay is non-linear, so a lot of time was spent sorting out which keys went to which locks, including managing keys for later use. The laser area shown in the promo photos is very fun but did not work quite correctly for us. Overall would recommend, was fun for a party.
