Western Bank Heist

The gamemaster was good and the room had a few fun features but there were two issues that would make me not recommend: 1. The code to one of the locks as something we stumbled onto almost by accident and it caused us to accidentally trigger some of the room too early. The GM talked us away from that part so it wasn't a big deal, but it shouldn't have happened at all. 2. There is a puzzle that's just... horrid. It isn't a thinking puzzle. You know exactly what needs to be done but the physical mechanics to make it happen are so rough. It was very frustrating. They need to change that particular piece. We did end up finally getting it but we weren't having fun by that point.

Puzzle solutions were in many cases not telegraphed at ALL. There were some red herrings that had 0 indication that they were red herrings or that there might be other solutions, and no signals about which solution was correct. There were multiple puzzles that we're pretty sure the GM was just watching to push a button when we did vaguely the correct thing, meaning there were also no visual cues about where to place things, which in turn means those puzzles took 10x longer to solve because we were wandering around trying to figure out where to place certain objects, even after we had generally figured out the puzzle. Some of the puzzles were so intensely embedded into the environment that we really struggled to make them work. There was another puzzle where the solution was clear but seemed deliberately designed to be obnoxious to achieve, which just left us frustrated and feeling like we wasted our time because we could clearly see what needed to be done but couldn't get the puzzle to work the way we needed it to.

the room itself is good, but our experience was ruined by a last minute booking joining us & the game master. We tried to be kind to let the other group complete the tasks or unlock things, but they didn't offer us the same courtesy and basically took over, despite needing guidance at every step. The game master for some reason just started walking us through the entire game, giving step by step instructions without even letting us discuss what to do next. We don't understand why they did this & even asked them to stop as it was ruining the experience. On a different day, with a different group, this room likely would have been a blast - seemed like a clear flow with a good story line, but the fun just got ruined for us.

Did this room after The Dig. While it was a better designed room there is a single dexterity puzzle that is intentionally designed to fail players. You easily could waste your entire hour on it and we were told it is that way purposefully. “50 percent of our teams finish it, and 50 percent don’t” is literally what we were told. After we completed the room, we were told that even a literal baby had completed it. It was actually pretty funny how openly antagonistic the gamemasters were. Haha, this place is awful.

While not quite plumbing the depths of their other rooms, Western Bank Heist is certainly not a must-do room. The freshest of their rooms here, laminated materials were still showing their age and props and puzzles were worn and seemingly needed to be manually cleared by GM upon completion. I felt like there were some clever things going on in here, with a slightly more logical & open solve path. HOWEVER: This room features the single most obnoxious, frustrating time sink of a physical challenge I have ever experienced in nearly 100 rooms. My obvious frustration prompted our GM to helpfully chime in that “50% of teams fail this, you’re just going to have to figure it out” We figured it out; but lucky for you, you don’t have to! Spend your time doing something fun elsewhere in the city!