Heresy: 1897 [Immersive Theatre]Doors Of DivergenceEscape roomIRLHeresy was a ton of fun and is, I think, as yet, still under appreciated. It is, first and foremost, an extraordinarily ambitious concept, but beyond that it’s also just a great escape room with fun puzzles, great scenery, and an uncommon approach to acting, roleplaying, and game mastering. Without a doubt, my favorite part of Heresy (and of Doors of Divergence generally) is the concept. As you play the escape room, you make decisions which affect the story and the progression of the escape room. Sometimes you know that you’re making a critical decision, other times you don’t even realize it. All of these decisions combine to make 4 different possible endings for Heresy. And not only that, but the specific ending you experience affects the start of their second room (Madness), which has *even more* possible endings. Wild. In fact, based on a choice you make early on, you only see about 1/2 of the puzzles, rooms, and content. I want to play it again to see the other half. I want to play their other rooms. Multiple times. They reward you afterwards by showing you a flow chart of roads taken (or I would say, taunt you with roads _not_ taken). I think I might have the same problem with Doors of Divergence that I have with, say, an Assassin’s Creed game - there’s too much content and I _have_ to see it all! When you arrive at Doors of Divergence, you first check in and leave your bags/coats at the front. Then you go into the Paradox Lounge, where an actor gives you a drink and a rules briefing. While the bag/coat check attendants are out of character, the bartender is in character. It’s an effective way to acclimate you to the mild roleplaying of the game in a low-stakes situation and move you into the magic circle of Doors of Divergence’s world. The game itself was really enjoyable. The sets are extremely immersive, in a sort of theatrical way (the sets have no ceilings, and there’s no attempt to hide the theater-style lights and lighting rails above), and all of the props felt high quality. The puzzles were fun and unique - I felt like they were a little harder than average but certainly not impossible. And while the rooms clearly used a lot of technology, you didn’t notice wires or switches; everything felt diegetic. Heresy has an in-character combo actor/gamemaster who starts the game in the room with you and comes and goes throughout. Throughout the game they both attempt to pull you into roleplay with them but also heighten the tension of the story. My group was…frankly a little weak on the roleplay, so we struggled to match the intensity that our “proctor” brought with them, but by the middle of the game they established a sort of so-serious-it’s-a-little-silly vibe that I enjoyed. I sort of accidentally ended up with a full team of 8 people. While we had a great time, it was frankly too many people. Heresy is probably best with 3-5, maybe 6. But overall, this is definitely an experience worth having at least once. Maybe twice. And I can’t wait to see their second and third game.
The Founder's SecretThe Lodge of Lazarus CroweEscape roomIRLLet me get the easy stuff out of the way first. The Founder’s Secret is an excellent escape room; likely the best in the Twin Cities. If you value great sets, a very cool environment, an unending series of unique interactions, and well-designed puzzles, this is the game for you. It is not necessarily committed to telling a traditional beginning-to-end story, but if you pay attention, there is a lot of environmental storytelling and lore that will help you solve the room. Run, don’t walk, etc. However, no single entry in Morty can capture what (IMO) makes the Lodge at Lazarus Crowe so uniquely special, so I’m going to use this review as my soapbox, because I think this may be the most structurally innovative escape room location in the US right now, and if you don’t pay attention you might miss it. The Lodge of Lazarus Crowe makes extremely creative use of their (very unique) space, with each of their experiences weaving in and out of the corridors of the collection of this secret society. The more traditional "investigations" proceed from the corridors into more traditional escape rooms, while their "field work" and "stay and play" experiences stay in that liminal space. By doing this, the Lodge creates a world that is full of intrigue - why is that person staring at that painting? how do *I* get to interact with that cool prop? - where it's never clear what is just decor and what is actually part of a puzzle (minor spoiler: it's all part of *some* puzzle). To me, the true magic of the Lodge is not just from playing any one game, or even all of the more traditional rooms, but from the incremental surprise and delight of learning how the different elements layer together to form a more complete whole. Some of that comes from playing the investigations, but at least as much comes from the non-traditional experiences. I found The Alchemy Lab, A Brief Case, A Fatal Claw, and Initiation to all be consistently well-written and -edited with fun and satisfying solve paths. And that is my main advice: don’t assume that the field work and stay and play experiences are “less-than” their more standard escape rooms. Even if you just space out your rooms and plan to spend a few hours of downtime at the Lodge, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
Whatever Happened To The Garretts?Maze Rooms - West LAEscape roomIRLI really enjoyed this game. The setup seems a little bland, but the room is not. There's a good variety of puzzles that are challenging without being impossible, and a handful of very satisfying moments. Our GM was great - very welcoming and clearly paying attention; when we asked for hints they were well-tailored to the type and amount of help we needed. There are a bunch of easter eggs hidden throughout the room in homage to the particular genre and era that the room is channeling - I won't say more to avoid spoilers, but definitely ask your GM to point them out.
The Secret LabLocked In EdinburghEscape roomIRLThe Secret Lab was delightful. It was fast-paced and engaging with a great mix of puzzles and several very satisfying moments. There were a few specific puzzles that were unlike anything I’ve seen elsewhere, and overall there was a ton of variety in what we were asked to do. They made excellent use of a space with a very unique history. Our GM was excellent - friendly and accommodating and clearly paying attention to our gameplay - and the mechanism for delivering clues to players was a real joy.
The Cutting RoomLocked In EdinburghEscape roomIRLThe Cutting Room was a challenging but enjoyable puzzling experience. There’s a really satisfying variety of puzzles without being short on cluing or signposting. My only complaint was that the space becomes somewhat stuffy - I might be inclined to say that it impacted our solving in the back half of the game, although realistically we were as much to blame as the environment. Otherwise I had a blast (although I think I probably liked The Secret Lab more)
Smugglers DenEscape My RoomEscape roomIRLThis room was really enjoyable. It benefits a lot from the shorter length (45 minutes), since it can remain novel without exhausting its schtick. I really appreciated the way that this room used some common escape room concepts in new and exciting ways, since you can’t read anything. We played with 2 and found that to be good.
Red GiantQuest Room - HollywoodEscape roomIRLGoing in, I really wanted to like Red Giant. The story, theme, and set were all really impressive and up my alley. However, we had a pretty rough game. In general, I don’t like to leave bad reviews just because the puzzles didn’t click with me, but in this case, there were problems with the maintenance of the room and our GM experience that felt like they went beyond that. I’ll start with what was good: the sets were great as was the overall ambiance. There were great story beats at the beginning, middle, and end. There were several cool moments where solving a puzzle triggered some sort of large physical mechanism. You definitely wondered if you were going to trigger some sort of mummy’s curse. Less good: the mechanism to move from the first room to the second room - the one that triggered the great story beat at the beginning - was just broken. I spent 2-3 minutes fiddling with it to make sure I wasn’t missing some aspect of how it worked. Eventually our GM intervened and manually triggered the unlock. The resulting show scene was cool, but was undercut by my frustration with the mechanism. Obviously it would be ideal if the mechanism worked, but if it’s broken, I would expect the GM to know and intervene much more aggressively. And the ugly: several of the puzzles in the room felt to me like they lacked adequate signposting. It felt like there was a goal of avoiding text in English to avoid breaking immersion, but the end result was that it was just hard to tell what to do. One puzzle traded on a common puzzle type, but with an extra mechanic that wasn’t clued. We only learned the extra mechanic when we asked for a hint in frustration - I felt like that information should have been clued in the room or volunteered by the GM when it was clear we otherwise knew what to do. Another required extracting information that we could barely see, even with 3 people staring at it. Given how fiddly so many of the puzzles were, I would have preferred to see much more active babysitting by our GM, who instead was almost entirely hands-off unless we explicitly asked for help. My advice to others would be to approach Red Giant as a story to experience rather than a puzzle to solve and aggressively ask for hints. With that approach, I think you might have a better time than we did.
Strange MagicMind MastersEscape roomIRLI loved this game, and I think a lot of people miss what makes it so amazing. Strange Magic understands how misdirection works in magic better than any other magic-themed escape room I’ve done. From the moment you walk in, this game misdirects you. It starts with the set, which fools you into thinking you’re playing an old-school locks-and-boxes room and goes on to…well, a magician never reveals their secrets, I guess. I can’t say whether every misdirect was intentional, but either way, it _works_. People praise Strange Magic for its tech (which is surprisingly great) and its puzzles (which are beautifully on theme), but I think most people overlook just how effectively this game misdirects you the entire time you’re playing it. It’s not big and over the top in a traditional sense, but it’s still chock full of big ideas - you just have to pay attention. I think this is one of the best games in the Orlando area, and the owners were a true delight to talk with afterwards. I can’t wait to see what they do next.
InterstellarEvasion Escape RoomEscape roomIRLI should say up front that I played this game in Italian, and I speak, at most, _some_ Italian. The game is available in English, but I joined a group that was more comfortable with Italian. The game was mostly language-independent (with text in both English and Italian), and I think I can separate my language difficulties from critique of the game, but it feels important to disclose nevertheless. I liked Interstellar. It was a lot of fun, had good puzzles, well-integrated technology, high quality props, a satisfying ambiance, and impressively creative use of space. After briefing us on the backstory and rules, our GM instructed us to close our eyes and guided us each into specific positions in the room, creating some initial division. We were instructed to keep our eyes closed until the initial audio briefing finished. I thought this was a great approach to starting the game, as it felt like we were dropped into the middle of the action, rather than walking into something. We found this first room of this game to be the most challenging, for a mix of reasons. We were a new team still learning to communicate effectively. We didn’t (I think) entirely understand the pre-game briefing. And, of course, we committed some search failures. On reflection, I don’t think there were any problems with the puzzles themselves, although I felt like they could have used slightly more signposting. The first room also felt the most puzzle-y. The other rooms contained some puzzles, but the rooms tended to lean more on teamwork and coordination than pure puzzling, which I quite enjoyed! While the structure of the game was relatively linear, the reliance on teamwork meant that none of us ever felt bored. There were several _very_ satisfying moments, including some usage of lasers that had me giddy and a location in the room that I would never have guessed we would use. A few logistics notes. The game has a hard minimum of 3 players, but would have been better at 4. Interstellar is also unlisted on Evasion’s main website, as it’s intended for more experienced solvers. However, the Interstellar-specific page is not hard to find with Google, and while I haven’t confirmed this, I suspect they would be happy to welcome anyone who cares enough about escape games to use Morty.
Alien EncounterClue CarréEscape roomIRLThis was a really well-executed game with good sets, puzzles that didn’t feel stale, and technology that heightened the experience. It requires bringing a lot of information back and forth between rooms (and warns you of that up front). I sometimes find that frustrating, but here it worked for me. It also meant that it helped to have a larger team, as there was a lot of information to share back and forth.
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