SherLock Studies

This was a very traditional old school escape room. No RFID puzzles or high tech stuff. Most of the locks were 5-letter word locks, so that was a little same-y. However, it was a fun murder mystery to solve, with a kind of clue-esque metapuzzle to solve at the end, and we had a good time. It could have been improved by just a little more info letting us know that each of the suspects and weapons could only be used in one place (e.g., if someone was somewhere else using a weapon, even at a different time than the time of the murder, that person would be eliminated as a suspect).

Lighthearted and well-themed. Fans of Sherlock Holmes will appreciate this traditional lock-heavy escape room. There's a great puzzle involving portraits and a fun "connect the clues" element at the end of the room to determine the murderer, weapon and location - it feels like playing Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective. Probably my favorite Sherlock Holmes game (I've played a few).

Solid game one of the first mystery games where I feel like I am actually searching through evidence to put together the pieces of the puzzle. Felt like a hunt the killer game where I actually had all the pieces and the pieces weren’t obscure to the point where you think it’s irrelevant.

The process of gradually gathering clues and piecing together the solution to the mystery was an unusual and appropriate way to theme the overarching puzzle. Other than that, nothing really stood out as memorable to me - it felt like a little like a throwback to early escape rooms, though it would have been good back then.

I really wanted to enjoy this room. The theming was cool and the puzzles were interesting. But one of the locks didn't work even though we had the correct combination, and they didn't give us all our time back when they had to come in and force the lock open. Gamemasters were not responsive and it took several requests for help. Also, they didn't seem to be following our gameplay and would give us answers we had already solved.

Sherlock Holmes is missing (as usual) and your team has to find the evidence he left in his study to exonerate someone wrongly accused of murder. The puzzles in this game are very easy (a couple of them are almost insultingly easy) but the core concept is good: there is a “murder board” and as you explore the room you find various pictures of pieces of evidence along with newspaper clippings and other documents that give you clues as to how these pictures are connected to one another (and how they are not) which is basically one big game-spanning logic puzzle. If you draw the right conclusions, you’ll solve the case and save the day. There is enough to do for some folks to work on the murder board while others are solving the puzzles, but I would say just play with 2 and then you get to do everything. Recommended if you are at The Escape Effect anyway, but it is so easy that I wouldn’t recommend going just to play this one game.

We had a large group, 6 people, half super expert and the other half not. The room was challenging, even for the experienced players. It took all of us to come together to get some of the clues! Overall great themed room and challenging play! Great!