Curse of the Crimson Dragon

This was a great room and a love letter to all things Dungeons and Dragons. They leaned heavily into the lore with well themed puzzles. There's a lot to do so if you don't have a lot of experience under your belt, I'd recommend 3 people. The set design was ok. This felt like more of an escape room with a lot of fantasy puzzles than an actual castle. Whole Brain as a whole is mostly older rooms so lots of locks although a few things had some tech to it. Come for this room as well as their 80's one. Time permitting, throw in Pirates and Mystic Orb (which is leaving soon).

As a previous review mentioned, prepare for a fast-paced (by necessity) and puzzle-oriented escape room! This is partway between a first and second generation escape room and truly maximizes the value of that experience. We tackled this escape room with two players and took an aggressive pace to solve it. It was exciting and engaging - highly recommend for any puzzle lovers! The owner took some time after we finished to talk shop and share other recommendations in the area which was really appreciated as well.

This was a completely different type of escape room than we had ever done, but we loved it all the same. I think if escape rooms (regardless of quality b/c there are good and bad of all styles) were on a spectrum this would occupy the left side where things are more linear, logical and puzzle driven vs. the right side which is more immersive, exploratory and story driven. As noted by other reviewers the games at Whole Brain seem to be very linear and very "Think but don't overthink" in their design. It progresses riddle/puzzle-lock-riddle/puzzle-lock. Once you get the rhythm down, that start here literally means start here, that you can trust all the labels on everything and just take it at face value. The puzzles become fast-paced and fun as you go from brain teaser to brain teaser, split up, and come together again. The flip side is that it isn't an immersive room. Don't get me wrong it is well-themed and well-designed, but the puzzles on the walls and boxes you need to enter and locks you need to open are all front and center. Our family has been going down the rabbit hole of immersive rooms where you aren't even aware of the puzzles before it is really time to solve them because they blend. Here it was like, "wow there are so many things that are obviously puzzles and so many things that are obviously boxes with locks" our family very randomly was trying to open things and work puzzles that seemed complete but WERE NOT complete (because it was linear - yeah duh). Once we got out of our typical strategy(go around the room and grab everything; try any obvious hands-on style stuff early, etc.) and realized just how linear it was we had a ball. It felt like a good mental workout. As a result, we barely made it out because we didn't really catch on until 15 minutes in (SMH). Now that we understand the game designer's approach and mindset we are really looking forward to going back and doing the rest of the rooms.

We did all 4 rooms in one day and this was the family favorite. Whole Brain Escape is a great place to go and have fun!

Whole Brain Escapes is a different style of escape room. They are fun and logical. Riddles abound. There is lots of reasoning involved and you have to read stuff! But they are good linear style rooms and the puzzles make sense with no crazy logical leaps or red herrings. We enjoyed this room and completed it with no hints!