@bfwolf's reviews on Morty

Edit: I am updating this from thumbs down to thumbs up based on Paniq's response to my review. Heidi, Paniq's regional manager, reached out to me saying that this was a training error and it was indeed Paniq's policy to charge the price at the door for extra players at the correct prorated amount. She refunded my purchase in its entirety and gave me a voucher for a free game which is more than generous. She also said that they do take feedback from their GMs seriously and that they are already in process of updating the puzzle I disliked. I really appreciate that she worked very hard to make this right. It's unfortunate that a bad review was required to get Paniq's attention, but I do believe they are an honest company with a good (albeit expensive) product based on the one room I've done with them. In their defense on the price part, the rent in Logan Square is probably pretty high. Original review below. The reason I gave this a thumbs down is because they have a policy that I believe is a rip-off to customers. This game has a sliding scale where the more players you have, the cheaper per person it gets. They also offer the ability to add more players, and the FAQ states "So long as your final player count does not exceed your chosen game's limit, that's not a problem! We can process payment for extra players at the door. We are unable to process refunds for players who don't show up, so book conservatively if your final headcount is uncertain." So I booked for 2 and then added 2 at the door. However, they did not give us the price for 4 people in total, we paid $8 plus tax more than that. When I sent them an email inquiring, they said, "Since our games are private, we have scaling pricing for smaller groups. Once purchased, this price is not adjusted for variations in the group size. To mitigate this, additional tickets are set at our cheapest player price: $37.95, instead of the additional tickets also being $43.95 at the 4 player rate." I think this is unfair and takes advantage of customers. There's no mention of it in the FAQ or the booking process. This is on top of the fact that the game is already very expensive compared to other escape rooms, and the fact that when I booked it initially, I got charged a $3.71 transaction fee that was apparently unavoidable unless I had a prepaid voucher. So that's another ripoff. Basically, this company is trying to find little ways to sneak in hidden charges and it's unethical. The game itself was enjoyable. Really good atmosphere, mostly good puzzles, though there's two puzzles that are of the exact same type--I don't like the kind of puzzle that was represented at all, and two was definitely too many. Especially as one was the last puzzle of the game. When I gave feedback on that, I was just told by the GM that they agree. It was clear that they were not empowered at this chain to actually provide feedback on the design. But overall, the GM was perfectly nice.

I am sorry to have to say this, but this is a bad room, and I would not recommend it. My friend and I did it on a whim after a Cubs game since it was in the neighborhood. We just walked up and they graciously allowed us to play without a reservation. My feedback: The set design is so-so at best. Overall it's pretty cheap looking. There's some video content which is nice, but the volume was turned down so low we had to really lean in to hear it. The hint system is walkie talkies. Walkie talkies are a bad hint system. I should be able to talk and the GM hear me. At one point we did ask for a hint, and the GM basically gave us the answer to one of the puzzles. That's not much of a hint, but it was near the end of the game so didn't matter much anyway. The main lab puzzle is ridiculously involved, unclear, and tedious. It's not fun. There's crawling involved, which is OK. But once we crawl through, we should be able to unlock the door to where we are instead of having us crawl back and forth a bunch of times. Crawling once is fun. Crawling 5 times isn't fun. The tech on the last puzzle we were on didn't work. The GM said if we'd had more time, he would've seen it didn't work and reset it. Why didn't he reset it before we ever started then? The puzzle itself was pretty weak, too. There's another puzzle which basically requires no skill or thinking at all--I don't want to say more because of spoilers but there's not much to spoil. The game requires using a dry erase marker for keeping track of stuff. Our dry erase marker didn't work. We asked for a new one. The new one ALSO didn't work. GMs need to check the dry erase marker with every reset and definitely check a replacement marker before bringing it in. You would've thought that they would give us a few extra minutes when time ran out since we had to wait on the replacement dry erase markers (and crawl back to get them each time), but nope, as soon as time was up, the GM came in the room to tell us we'd failed. Our GM also did a very poor job of explaining the remaining puzzles left when we ran out of time. We did the room with 2 people, which is of course a low number and adds difficulty, but the room is almost entirely linear so I don't think more people would've made much difference. Of all the puzzles we did, there was exactly one that I thought was interesting. I've done 234 rooms at the time of this writing, and this is a bottom 10 room for me.

I gave this a like but a part of me wanted to give it a love. Objectively, it's not quite good enough to be a love room, but it has a lot going for it: Really nice gamemaster Logical puzzles that were mostly fun to solve No task puzzles, where you know how to solve it but execution is difficult (these are not my jam) While generally low budget, they did a nice job with the decor and special effects given the budget. While this was their easier room, it was plenty difficult for the 2 of us, who used the entire hour to get out with 1 clue. (The other reviewer who set the record with 26 minutes didn't mention there were 7 of them! lol) And not to be a big city snob, but this room is certainly better than one might expect from a small town escape room. Downsides are minimal: The use of one prop twice, which was annoying when we were told 1 key, 1 lock, which I (mistakenly) took to also mean props would only be used once. Even if that weren't the rule, that prop shouldn't be reused and they should find a different way to clue that part. It's a very gen 1 room. For a magic room, one might reasonably expect more "magic." The scale is pretty small. There's nothing that's going to wow you. Overall, I would certainly recommend it and come back with a bigger team to do their more difficult room.

Judging this purely as an escape room not as a conservation education center. It’s a really weak escape room. The puzzles have logic leaps. The little tech that exists is not seamless. It’s incredibly cheap so it’s not like you’re getting ripped off. But don’t expect developed world levels of escape room entertainment. People who run it are nice.

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