An excellent room, the live actor for Lord Garrick really ties it all together. This room is immersive-theater-with-puzzles; I've done a room or two where there was someone in the room with you, but they were primarily there in-universe to provide hints if you needed, not someone you actually interacted with throughout the experience. The puzzles aren't spectacularly difficult, and they're well-themed and clever. Definitely some puzzles I haven't seen before in other rooms. The difficulty comes from trying to do the puzzles within the mini-time-limit that's set by the live actor (you'll understand when you do it).
Diego was a great GM and Andrew as Lord Garrick was fantastic. Our group of 6 went in with some light roleplaying, and Andrew played off of it without skipping a beat. We had some really stupid jokes flying between our group, and Andrew was able to riff off of it in character with ease. He's able to get a feel for who in the group can take the pressure with some light ribbing, and who to yell at and scold. A great time for everyone! We escaped with seconds to spare, but I would argue the actual puzzles don't take nearly that long, as we spent a good chunk of time interacting with the actors.
Gameplay elements made sense, and all the tech used in the puzzles felt appropriately in-universe. Puzzles were thematic.
Atmosphere was immersive, live actor for Lord Garrick definitely helps sell it. All the puzzles (and more importantly, the solutions) were all in-universe, as well as the hint system and the visual representation of how much time we had left.
Great! Diego got us checked in quickly and asked us a few intro questions about our experience level so he could gauge it, and we were able to interact with Diego and Andrew after the whole experience to just talk about the whole thing.
Particularly interesting or different
Yes
The live actor is the secret sauce in this one. The puzzles are all great and thematic, but it's truly the interaction with the live actor that brings it all together.
Pretty much every puzzle was thematic and worked in the story. The live actor sells the story incredibly well and really adds another dimension to the whole experience, especially since it builds in a small break from puzzles as well as its own mini-time limit within the overall hour time limit.
I would say Medium-Hard. Puzzles themselves aren't particularly difficult, especially when you have a couple of brains working on them at the same time, but there's one puzzle that isn't super intuitive. The main difficulty comes from trying to get things done while avoiding the live actor. The fun comes from not avoiding the live actor.
Mostly high-tech. Three physical locks. Can't say much more without straight up giving out spoilers.
Experience is for 4-8, we had 6. Puzzles flow linearly from one puzzle to the next, so it helps to have more than one set of eyes on a puzzle, but there aren't multiple going on at once that you need a ton of people to split up on.
Spooky with some elements bordering on scary. There are maybe 2 or 3 jump-scares throughout the entire experience, so that's what I'm classifying as "scary" just because I don't like jump-scares.
Frankly I have no idea what kids get up to nowadays, and I was an incredibly boring teenager, but I'll just go with the PG-13 rating as there are puzzles and themes dealing with cannibalism. But you could've found that out just by looking at any material surrounding this room, so I mean... you know your kids best.
The final puzzle requires button-pushing of a name, and at least for ours, it was a little finicky. Not broken by any means, in fact it was working exactly as intended, but because of the reset feature when we typed in a wrong name, we may have typed in the right name too quickly and it would reset partway through.
Two live actors, one you interact with only briefly in the experience, and then Lord Garrick, who you'll see for most of the experience, save for moments where he leaves the room.
Physically active
Somewhat
I am torn between "not at all" and "somewhat" because it does require crawling for a brief moment, and some mild "rushing" to not get caught. In the final part of the experience, you do also have to hold a door shut, although not super strenuous.
Accessibility
There is one part that requires crawling for a brief moment; if you can't comfortably kneel and crawl, you'll miss out on some important parts. Lighting is also moody for most of it, with a red glow the entire time. If you have trouble seeing in low lighting, might not be for you. There are light sources (electric candles) that you can pick up, which definitely helps with the theming, but still.
Location is labelled with signage, as well as advertisements for their different rooms posted on the exterior windows.
Located in a small strip mall, with its own parking lot. Easy.