Boom Room

We did both rooms at this location and started with Boom Room. This is the better of the two rooms but the GM makes or breaks an experience and I found this end of it lacking. The story was interesting and the sound effects that played throughout made that end of it fun. The villain's taunts as you advanced through the game were a very nice touch. The scenic design was well done and had a great bunker vibe. The props and puzzles were tied into and it made for a cohesive room. The puzzles were fun and some were unique and I enjoyed the flow for most. My biggest concern was the final puzzle. I'm not a fan of outside knowledge being needed to solve the puzzle. You could fix the problem easily enough by adding a little more info throughout the game. My biggest issue was the business end of it. We were led back to the room and the start of it seemed fine but then that end of it quickly fell apart. There is no timer in the room and we were given two time updates over walkie talkies at the 40 minute and 20 minute intervals. When we asked for a clue, the GM had no idea where we were in the game or what help was needed. I know were cutting it close to not escaping but we finished the final puzzle in time. The villain's threat rang out that he would be back. We felt good, but then we just stood there. There was nobody to greet us. We waited for a bit and then finally walked back up front. We were asked if we escaped. We answered yes but were told we didn't make it out in time. We said we had. We heard the winners announcement. We just waited back there for a while. Why didn't you come up? Well, we didn't know were were supposed to do that... nothing was every mentioned to us. The room was above average but the experience was lacking.

Gameplay was old school but fun. Hint system and game master attention were very much lacking. We were stuck at one point and between really slow response time from GM and having a hard time getting across what we were working on it ended up being very frustrating. There is also one white board in one of the rooms attached to the wall so it couldn’t go to the other rooms, but that didn’t matter since the marker was not functional anyway. We finished the room went back out to the lobby and to the bathroom and it was several minutes before our GM came over from the other side of the facility (so not watching room cameras) and realized we were out of the room. Staff was nice and friendly but very inattentive. This room was otherwise fun, which is why I gave it a middle level review, but the issue with hints really took away from it.

Fun game, though some puzzles are very vague, leading to more assumptions than I would like. There is also a puzzle at the end that requires outside knowledge which I am not a fan of and could easily be resolved. Multiple instances of darkness as a puzzle with limited light source that can be aimed but not moved (which means multiple instances of accidentally looking directly at the light). There is also a directional puzzle with figures that point in a direction that doesn't match the puzzle clues (figure direction needs to be ignored, again could easily be fixed). Some decoding would benefit strongly from having something to write on (white board is available after a certain point but not portable).

Nothing special, but some pleasant surprises. Worth playing if you’ve already checked out every other game in the area.

Not a good experience. The biggest issue was that the game master was completely inattentive. When we asked for clues, he gave us clues we already figured out. When we escaped and walked out of the room, he was surprised to see us because he wasn’t watching. There was also at least one puzzle that was not well crafted and relied on an ability none of us had.