Game On: UNLOCKED ArcadeUNLOCKED: Escape RoomEscape roomIRLReally adored the theming and the unique puzzles. I was feeling pretty sick of escape rooms that just send you from one 4-digit lock to another, and this one has several really unique things that I loved. It really felt like walking into an arcade. It's not super story-heavy, but its very non-linear nature was cool and well-done. I am kicking myself that I can't remember our GM's name, but he was great as well. There was an issue with the final puzzle, but we had clearly solved it so the GM stopped the time as soon as we solved it, then came in to fix the puzzle for us.
Aunt Edna’s InheritanceExpedition EscapeEscape roomIRLThis was a cute little room. Pretty unique theming, decently executed. Nothing especially surprising or unique in puzzle design, but solid design overall. Everything worked as expected. I would recommend it, especially to those who are still relatively beginner. We over-thought some of the clues, thinking they would be more complicated than they actually were, which slowed us down. 😅 Our GM Deja was great!
Western Bank HeistEscape the Room - RittenhouseEscape roomIRLPuzzle solutions were in many cases not telegraphed at ALL. There were some red herrings that had 0 indication that they were red herrings or that there might be other solutions, and no signals about which solution was correct. There were multiple puzzles that we're pretty sure the GM was just watching to push a button when we did vaguely the correct thing, meaning there were also no visual cues about where to place things, which in turn means those puzzles took 10x longer to solve because we were wandering around trying to figure out where to place certain objects, even after we had generally figured out the puzzle. Some of the puzzles were so intensely embedded into the environment that we really struggled to make them work. There was another puzzle where the solution was clear but seemed deliberately designed to be obnoxious to achieve, which just left us frustrated and feeling like we wasted our time because we could clearly see what needed to be done but couldn't get the puzzle to work the way we needed it to.
