snacktastic
50 escape rooms
The Return is a very basic and sparse mechanical room. The GM at the beginning seemed to tout the sparseness of the room as a positive, that "everything will be used... everything". If you enjoy being immersed into the theming of the room, finding puzzles hidden among the objects, and the satisfaction that you noticed something others may not; this is not the room for you. Puzzles become process of elimination until you make the connection they want you to. The experience is incredibly front-loaded, but not in the sense of quantity or "difficulty" of puzzles, instead the start of the experience is marred by lack of quality information and the time it takes to parse that is what takes the majority of the hour you will have. The next section of the game goes entirely too quickly and ends abruptly. I was left surprised that the room had ended and we escaped, which is never a good sign. Honestly, the main positive here is that there is no ticket minimum, so only having to pay $60 for a private two-person experience is great. Overall, if you like other NERD Escape Rooms you'll probably like this one too, but each one I've done at these locations is just subpar.
Gameplay
Some fun and slightly unique puzzles. Relied heavily on magnets, which is a bummer. Once you get the idea everything jumps out at you.
Atmosphere
Very bland room. Downfall of "everything" being part of the game. Didn't feel like I was naturally solving puzzles just eliminating objects that had been used already.
Customer service
Particularly interesting or different
No
Story
Two notes give the entire "story" and that was not nearly enough. Room ended abruptly.
Difficulty
Medium
Most difficult part of the room was the first 20-30 minutes, everything after that was quite simple.
Game tech
Mechanical
Ideal number of players
2
Scary
Not scary
Minimum age
12
Was anything broken?
No
Live actors
No
Physically active
Not at all
Easy to find location
Yes
Parking
Medium
