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pastormikewilson
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pastormikewilson
Mike Wilson | Gillette, WY
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Escape rooms (37)
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Apt A / Apartment A
Murfreesboro Escape Rooms
Escape room
IRL
Apartment A is a tribute room. It is a memorial to Adam Love, a former employee of Murfreesboro Escape Rooms. The draw of this room is obviously the story, especially for those people who knew Adam Love and his love for board games, movies, and cooking. The room is contained in only one small area, and the room is very linear. It's a great room for beginners who will need help from more experienced players because everyone in the room will be forced to work together on every puzzle. There are great generation two locks with responsive solves that have plenty of feedback.
Budapest Express
Escapology - Wichita
Escape room
IRL
The second escape room we did in Wichita, Kansas with my two brothers was Escapology. It was much better than The Room. Escapology is one of the largest escape room chains in the country. They develop their rooms at their headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee, and when they perfect a room, they put them all over the country. I've been to a couple of the Escapology locations, and they always have great lobbies, introduction videos, booking and check-in procedures, and friendly staff. Your game master (the person who gives you hints) is not usually the same person that shows you to your room. I don't really like that because information gets repeated, and you don't really get to know your game master. This location in located in The Alley, a giant entertainment center with an arcade, a bar/restaurant, a bowling alley, go carts, etc. The lobby of the escape room is really cool, and the waver signing process was simple. The employees were nice, but they seemed a little overwhelmed. I'm not sure why because there weren't many people there. My biggest tip for these rooms is make sure you pay attention to and remember what is in an area of the room when you move on to a new area and thoroughly search everything. We did four escape rooms at this location: Budapest Express, Mansion Murder, Under Pressure, and Cuban Crisis. This was a good room with great immersion and decor. Like most rooms, it had a mix of generation one (traditional) locks and generation two (electronic) locks, but I prefer to see more generation two locks. There were a couple clever twists in this room, but most of the puzzles/locks will be very familiar to people who have done a lot of rooms. I won't give too much away, but the ending was disappointing. There were only three of us doing the room, and a fourth person would have been helpful in this room because the ending requires people to divide and conquer. We completed it in about 55 minutes with two hints.
The Storykeeper
Locurio
Escape room
IRL
Cuban Crisis
Escapology - Wichita
Escape room
IRL
Cuban Crisis was definitely the worst room at this location. There weren't really any cool locks to unlock. There was two or three cool puzzles, but they weren't unique. I've seen puzzles like them in other rooms. The theme really didn't have much to do with the puzzles, and the decor/immersion was absolutely terrible. It wasn't an easy room because there were some puzzles that did not clearly connect to a lock. Because the theme was inconsistent, it took some trial and error just to figure out which puzzle was intended to give us a solution to which lock. Don't do this room. We completed it in about 45 minutes with one hint.
Curse of The Mayan Ruins
Escape Hour Gig Harbor
Escape room
IRL
Escape Hour is one of my favorite escape room companies, and their Gig Harbor location is incredibly impressive. The hospitality, creativity, immersiveness, cleanliness, and excellence are up to Disney World standards. Their storylines are clear and creative. Their puzzles are intuitive and well-connected to the story, and the room designs are meticulously crafted to immerse players in the world they are created to portray. Their spacious lobbies are impressively designed to introduce players to the story before the room begins. In the lobbies, there's a store with a lot of branded merchandise, a clean restroom, and a nice backdrop for post-room photos. The hosts obviously love their jobs. They are proud of their company, and they are excited for people to get the opportunity to experience their rooms. Escape Hour has one of the best escape room websites I've ever seen with beautiful artwork, intuitive navigation, and a lot of information about each room. They are very active on social media, and they do a great job of staying connected to their fans. Their puzzles and supplies work every time, and hint giving is clear and generous. They do use a lot of generation one locks, but their generation two locks are strategically placed to add immersion where the generation one locks remove it. Their rooms are too dark for my taste, but they do provide flashlights/torches. The hosts who tell you the story of the room aren't incredibly dynamic, but the rooms themselves do a good job of telling the story. The rooms have exciting climactic endings, and the host takes time to celebrate with you when you succeed. In fact, they take it one step farther and ask, "what was your favorite puzzle?" I love that! The game master actually takes time to talk through the room with you. They'll even gave us some behind the scenes information when we asked. The Curse of the Mayan Ruins is one of the best rooms I've ever played, largely because I love Indiana Jones! There's no one thing that makes the room so good, but it's just a lot of fun. It's the whole package. They did everything right. The physical challenge was actually a challenge, and the design is excellent. Everything, from the walls to the floor, was meticulously designed and integrated into the story. There is a great overlap between puzzle elements and design elements. The props and design elements are only props and design elements until you realize that they are actually puzzle elements. They hit a perfect balance between puzzle room and immersive experience. The immersive story compliments the puzzles well, but they don't take away from the puzzles. The puzzles and theme are just a lot of fun. I really like doing rooms with only two or three people, and this room is great for a small group. There are multiple nonlinear elements that allow multiple players to simultaneously work on a puzzle, but it creates good bottlenecks that bring players together at transitional moments. I rarely love rooms with this many generation one locks, but they were able to create generation one puzzles that actually fit the theme. The room had one of the most challenging logic puzzles I've done in a room, but it was doable. When you complete it, you have a great feeling of accomplishment and pride.
Evil Dead 2
Hourglass Escapes
Escape room
IRL
Hourglass Escapes Seattle is a small escape room in downtown Seattle. It's only a half of a mile from the Seattle Space Needle and one mile from Pike Place Market and the original Starbucks. Even though the location is downtown Seattle, we were able to find free parking right down the street. It's quite small, and the lobby is more like a hallway. The hosts are hospitable and clear, but they leave th immersion and acting to videos. Like most of the rooms in the Seattle area, Hourglass Escapes prioritizes enjoyment over competition. I love that. They will help you complete a room with clear and plentiful hints. They give plenty of clues to help you connect puzzles to the locks they open. They don't add red herrings, and in the dark rooms, they provide plenty of flashlights/torches. The most well-known room at Hourglass Escapes is the Evil Dead 2 room. It is one of the few rooms that are officially licensed by a movie, and it is obvious why the Evil Dead franchise trusted Hourglass enough to put their name on this room. I have never played a room with better production quality than the Evil Dead 2 room. Players do not need to see Evil Dead 2 before playing the room, but watching the movie first might make the experience more enjoyable. The locks and puzzles were very well integrated into the design of the room. With primarily generation two locks, they are able to create the feeling that you are interacting with a spiritual world. The room is very nonlinear. It can be completed by two experienced players, but the room would work well with four people because there are almost always multiple puzzles that a team can work on at any time. That allows the team to divide and conquer. Overall, this room is just a lot of fun. We laughed. We were scared. We enjoyed the puzzles, and the climactic ending left us with a memorable celebration moment.
Frankenstein: The Awakening
60 Minute Escape Game
Escape room
IRL
The rooms at 60 Minute Escape Games are as good as any rooms I've every played. The design is beautiful and immersive. They are intentional about stimulating all five senses including smells. Their generation two locks were clever, and even though a few of them didn't work perfectly on the first try, they were incredibly fun to unlock. The props and design are incredibly impressive, and the multilevel design allows them to make huge rooms without using a lot of square footage. Their hints are clear and helpful, and the game masters obviously love their rooms. When we arrived at 60 Minute Escape Games, I parked in a spot right by the front door that had a sign with their logo on it, but Billy pointed out to me that the sign said the space was reserved for the owner of 60 Minute Escape Games and threatened to tow anyone else who parks there. When we went inside, Billy asked to use the restroom, but they wouldn't allow him to use the restroom until after he signed a waver. We all like to use the restroom before we play a room, so we started walking back toward the restroom, but the host told us they only allow two people in the restroom at a time. When we entered the incredibly impressive rooms, we started looking at the details as the game master gave us instructions, but the game master told us to look at him while he tells us the room. Unfortunately, it felt like the owners of 60 Minute Escape Games care more about their rooms and their rules than their guests. Frankenstein is incredibly well designed. I've never seen a room that uses lights as well as this room. They used LED lights to point us in the right direction, provide light to see props and puzzles when necessary, and make successes more obvious, but when we walked in the room, most of those lights were off. That made the room more immersive, and the lights came on as the story and progress called or them. The final Frankenstein prop was beautiful, huge, and scary. Their use of electricity and sound to make it feel like the monster was coming to life made the moment incredibly immersive. The room was very large, and exploring it was a lot of fun.
Gold Rush
The Escape Game - Austin
Escape room
IRL
In early 2020, before the pandemic lockdowns, I went to The Escape Game in Austin, Texas with my brother and three of our friends/colleagues. It was incredible. The Escape Game is a large escape room chain. Since then, I have been to a couple other The Escape Game locations, and I've now learned that it wasn't just that room in Austin that was so good. All of their rooms are amazing. On this trip, we did Gold Rush. To this day, it is in my top three favorite rooms. All of the rooms at The Escape Game are very large with three or four big areas. Their lobbies are usually very small and underwhelming, but they have cool merch. If you get a chance to do a room at The Escape Game, do it. They're all good, and in my opinion, a few of them are among the best rooms in the country. My tips for their rooms: Pay very close attention to details. Search everywhere for clues. The rooms are so well designed that the puzzles blend in with the incredible decor. In a few of their rooms, we just totally missed very important clues because they just looked like they were part of the immersive environment. Sometimes you will have to go through a small opening to get into a new area, but when you get to the new area, look for a door to open that will let you back into the previous area so that you don't have to crawl/climb back and forth. Look for symbols that will connect puzzles/clues to locks. Recognizing which puzzles and clues go with which locks will help you solve the puzzles. There are so many cool elements in this room that I'm hesitant to write about them because I don't want to ruin the surprise...so I won't. This room is just incredibly fun. We had some beginners in the group, and we got out in about 55 minutes with three hints.
Haunted Deadwood B&B
Black Hills Escape Rooms
Escape room
IRL
Today I visited Black Hills Escape Rooms in Rapid City, South Dakota with my wife and two of our friends. We only did one room (Haunted Deadwood B&B) this time, but this is the second time I’ve been to this location. Last time we did Zombie Prairie Dog. Black Hills Escape Rooms had a great lobby with a very photo fun post-game photo area. It’s in a great location downtown Rapid by some great restaurants. For the size of town, the rooms are good, but the rooms could not compete with many of the big chain and big city rooms. The rooms are creative, and they use good generation two (electronic) locks. I applaud them for that, but the room designs reveal one of the few (but common) weaknesses of generation two locks. In these rooms, when you complete a puzzle, a lock is unlocked. When that happens, you might hear a quiet click that tells you something in the room opened, but more often then not, there is no feedback at all, and you don’t know if you successfully completed the puzzle or not. Consequently, you’ll have to regularly check locked doors, drawers, etc. to see if you unknowingly correctly completed a puzzle. If this happens multiple times in a room, I almost always have a feeling of disappointment at the end of the room. I recently realized that‘s because the room didn’t have enough climactic celebration moments. Good escape rooms have multiple break through moments when a puzzle is solved, a door is opened, etc. Those small celebrations combine to make the final celebration more exciting. When you solve puzzles without knowing you solved them or recognize a door unlocked without knowing how you unlocked it, celebration moments are replaced by confusion moments. I have seen designers counteract this problem by adding lighting/soundtrack changes when a puzzle is solved or by adding springs that make the door open more forcefully. Black Hills Escape Rooms need more celebration moments. The worst thing about the rooms at Black Hills Escape Rooms are the red herrings. They’re everywhere, both intentionally and unintentionally, and they aren’t just unnecessary items in the room. They hide red herrings in locked drawers with other legitimate puzzles. Their rooms have very small openings between the first area and the second area, and there is no way to make the opening larger or open a secondary door after you get into the second area. Consequently, you have to squeeze back and force between the two areas multiple times. Instead of getting hints through a mounted speaker or walkie talkie, you call the game master on a Facebook portal (or similar device). Then the game master actually comes to the room to give you a hint. The good thing about that is that you can more easily understand the hint. The bad thing is that if there was any feeling of immersion, that ends when someone who is out of character walks into the room. With all that said, I think Black Hills Escape Rooms’ next room is going to be awesome. The game designer is getting better and better, and if they would give up on the red herrings, they could add a few puzzles to each room to make them some of the best rooms in the upper midwest. I have a lot to say about this room (good and bad), but first I have to complain. There are red herrings everywhere! This room doesn’t actually have very many locks, but when you walk in it feels like there will be just because of the huge number of red herrings. Since we’ve already done a room here, we knew how to recognize them, and we were only a minute away from beating this room’s record. We bypassed so many puzzles (red herrings) that when we finished the room we thought we had skipped some steps in the room. On the good side, I loved the use of technology, and it all worked! I won’t give too much detail here, but I even had that “this can’t actually work” feeling when they used a piece of technology in a way I’d never seen it used before. There were almost no generation (traditional) locks in this room. The room and associated story was creative and unique. I even felt immersed a time or two, and some of the word clues were really clever. There’s another creative design element that surprised me that has more to do with the room layout, but I won’t spoil that.
High Noon
Murfreesboro Escape Rooms
Escape room
IRL
High Noon is not like most escape rooms you've played. It's a competitive racing room. It's old western theme, but there's no story at all. The room has two stacks of generation one locks. One stack has red locks, and one has blue locks. The room is full of puzzles that associate to icons next to each lock. Each puzzle has a red version and a blue version. The solutions to the red puzzles and the blue puzzles are slightly different, but the puzzles have the exact some mechanics. Your team can choose to split up and compete against each other, compete against another team, or stay together and only complete one stack of locks. The room is entirely nonlinear, and almost every puzzle has only one step. There's an old rotary phone in the corner, and any player can go to the phone at any time to ask for one of the five allowed hints. We really enjoyed because we like puzzles, and this was purely a puzzle room.
Lucky Lady Saloon
The Room - Wichita
Escape room
IRL
We only did one room at The Room. It was called The Lucky Lady Saloon. They only have three rooms. Each of the rooms are pretty small, and most of the lock are traditional, generation one locks. The puzzles are not very unique. If you've done a lot of rooms, you've seen a puzzle like all of the puzzles in this room. We got stuck on one puzzle, and actually barely made it out in time. It was actually my twin brother's first room, and we used all three hints. The theme and decor was very well done. The location (downtown) is great, but it was very busy when we were there.
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