The Haunted Mine [prev. Mineshaft]

In general, my group found the room way too dark -- we had a couple of LED lanterns, but they were not bright enough to solve many of the puzzles, some of which had faded/rubbed-off markings that could have used some touching up. We had six in our group, and we spent most of our time stuck in the first room, which was quite small (and very hot) for a group our size. Their website says that this room has a 60% success rate, but after we lost with about one-third of the puzzles unsolved, the GM told us we did the best she saw all weekend (we were there Sunday evening). She said that most groups don't even make it past the first room. Everyone in our group had done multiple escape rooms previously, and we found the puzzles to be generally unintuitive. While I appreciate an escape room business wanting to have a challenging room, we found The Haunted Mine to just be frustrating.

You only get 50 minutes in this room. Most escape rooms you have a full hour so this was already a challenge. Also, the clues are extremely difficult to figure out. We spent the first 30 minutes on the first clue and by the time they gave us the answers we figured that we would escape and then it made it harder to try. The clues were also scripted and not really tailored to what we needed. You have to pay extra for the room to be private and they had a gratuity.!

Even though we got hung up in the first room, once we moved onward, we finished this room in blazing fast time! Looking around, underneath, within was frustrating and hard to see which caused our delay. Puzzles were a bit, disappointing.

Light on puzzle content, and what there is, is ambiguously clued. Hints are "First come first served" since a single GM was servicing 3 separate games.

Overall I cannot recommend HDs games at all the clues for puzzles are narratively disconnected connected from the room and often require intuitive leaps and/or previous escape room experience. Quite often a game also requires a dexterity element such as doing a puzzle that you cannot physically see or crawling multiple times through a small opening.

Meh. We did the room when it was not “haunted”. Maybe now it’s better? This company is not the best when it comes to great game play though, so I’d pass if you’re looking for a really great game.