Mutiny: Skull IslandEscape Games at the RiverEscape roomIRLA fun game overall with beautiful decorations. A bit linear and lots of padlocks, but it had a solid array of puzzles that left us thinking and searching for most of the time. A few elements we hadn’t seen anywhere were particularly cool, but nothing I’d call mind blowing.
Temetra's HexEscape Hour Point RustonEscape roomIRLI have to say I’m surprised by the praise for this room. I really found it lacking. The cardinal sin of this room is that it is 100% linear. There’s always only one thing to be working on. In our group of four we often had two or more people standing around doing nothing This room is full of padlocks and codes for codes sake. Multiple times in this room you’ll put a code into a padlock only to get a key that goes in another padlock. Many of the codes are just sitting out in the open. If you’ve done more than a few escape rooms, you’ll encounter many familiar puzzles in this room. There’s just a lot of stuff in here that’s sharply unoriginal. And strangely more than one puzzle where the “key” was just sitting right next to the “lock”. The game had a few fun puzzles, and a couple cool input mechanisms, but these were largely drowned out by the boredom of puzzles we’ve seen before, and standing around waiting. To the game’s credit, the decor in the room is striking and cohesive, and the physical elements of the game were fun to engage with. However, the story and theming of the room were discordant and downright incomprehensible, and it made the puzzles which engaged with the theme significantly weaker. Our experience was marred as well by multiple broken or fiddly mechanisms which wasted a big chunk of our time, even when we had the correct answers. The staff and game master were delightful and friendly throughout. Overall, Temetra’s Hex is a fun space to occupy, which contains a flawed and dated escape room which is far from meeting the standard I would expect given the effusive praise it has received.
Mystery At Innsmouth: An Official Arkham Horror Escape RoomHourglass EscapesEscape roomIRLThis room is very parallel but relatively short, smaller groups will have plenty to do, larger groups will probably not unless they’re beginners. There were a couple puzzles we really enjoyed but for the most part they were fairly simple. For a room with this theme we felt the atmosphere and immersion were a letdown throughout the experience, particularly towards the end.
Dead Man's CoveEntangled - LynnwoodEscape roomIRLI genuinely have nothing positive to say about this room. It’s one of the worst escape rooms I’ve ever participated in. Avoid it if at all possible. Our group couldn’t think of a single puzzle or element in the entire room that we found especially engaging or interesting. Having two teams in the space made it noisy, hectic, and confusing, while adding nothing to the experience. Overwhelmingly most of the time in this room is spent trying to match keys to locks with no clues. On top of that, the staff refused to allow the “losing” team to finish the room after our team “won”. This is despite them telling us before the room that this wouldn’t be the case. Depriving them, for no good reason, of a part of the experience that they paid for. It’s downright criminal if you ask me. In our few interactions with them I found the staff to be rude, cold, and condescending. I strongly advise escape room enthusiasts to skip this establishment and look elsewhere.
