Escape room

Fox in a Box Chicago

The Prison

For starters we did choose to do "ask for clues, not just be constantly fed them". The room itself was okay (but not great). We were set in two different rooms to start, but was also expected to pass things to each other. I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if your arms are too short or don't fit in between the bars, since we didn't really have anything to ease the exchange.

Our GM Marina let us play the entire prison portion in the awful red light darkness, despite asking for hints several times and commenting openly and loudly about how awful it was that it was dark. Later they said it was "so impressive" that we solved the puzzles in the dark...you mean the ones that weren't even fun because literally the only challenge was that we couldn't see??? And at some point we asked for a hint and they said we were doing fine/great on time and didn't need it...only to find out that we spent way too much time in the complete darkness where we couldn't see and didn't have much time to do puzzles in the second room.

At some point GM got on to give us a clue about opening the vent grate, and then said "never mind" when it opened-- but I was literally sitting there opening it when they came on to give help about it. Which makes no sense unless you're not paying attention to what we're doing in the room, because I said out loud that I was taking the Allen wrench and found that I could unscrew the vent before unscrewing the vent. Like, I loudly announced my intentions to my group. And yet GM didn't know I was doing it??

Our computer also malfunctioned-- for some reason pressing keys did nothing after connecting and pressing enter opened up a right click pop up menu, but when asking the GM about it, they insisted that nothing like that happened because they didn't see it. 

Honestly, I think this was one of the bottom five GM experiences I've had doing escape rooms. Between the GM basically gaslighting about what was happening on our side to just enjoying watching us struggle unnecessarily even after we asked to help to just straight up missing what we're doing or trying, this was definitely one of the worst escape room GM experiences I've had. 

Side note: they also gave the "do not push open for emergencies button" spiel while IN CHARACTER as a warden, which reasonably my friends thought meant we should definitely open the door with it. Which makes sense, because it was given in character with a non trustworthy person. ...provide these instructions outside the game next time, so it's clear it's not in game.

(Similarly with the computer, make it clearer than the "don't type xyz" is meta game speaking, not warden in game speaking)

Anyway, this has been extremely disappointing and I'm now not sure I want to do anymore of these. Cute postcards aren't worth it if it meant you're not paying attention to the game.

Reviews

cheez246890

cheez246890

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Fox in a Box Chicago

The Prison