Time Machine

None of the puzzles in this room were too difficult. I think I give this room more credit for simply being very well themed and sciency. I didn’t love that any time the GM would speak to us, or the audio was telling story that it was impossible to make out. Other parts of the puzzles were not clear when they were solved and we could move on. Perhaps this is by design, but felt frustrating. One puzzle involving colors was really easy to solve, but the GM told us it’s funny to them because it’s a big red herring and people waste their time on it (less fun for me though). One puzzle the answer was basically given to us in the wall because “the projector doesn’t always work”, which again is not a great experience. More and more, I think it’s better to skip all the 60out rooms as they feel very dated, not fixed, and definitely not challenging.

It is very hard to rate this room without feeling bias from my overall experience today. I am giving this room a 👍🏼, but the overall company gets a 👎🏼. The two of us did 3 escape rooms at 3 different 60Out locations today and had similar issues at all 3 of them, so it feels like a problem embedded within their approach to running escape rooms. I don’t plan on doing any more 60Out rooms after this. I believe their core issue is that they don’t assign one GM to you for your room. When we arrived, we rang the doorbell to be buzzed in and no one responded. After a minute, another guest from the waiting room let us in because there wasn’t an employee to do it. We then proceeded to wait around for 45 minutes in the lobby and our room ended up starting a half hour late because there was another group still in it. This company threatens you in their emails to arrive 15 minutes early or else because the room will start whether you’re there on time or not and if you’re late the time will be taken out of your room… so it is pretty surprising that a group could still be in our room until 20 or 25 minutes into our time for the room. We were almost concerned about being late for our next appointment after this because we had to wait so long to even start. Later they told us they had gotten behind due to a group showing up a day early for their reservation and being very upset about it, so it had taken some time to resolve that issue. I’m guessing this is due to their GMs being so overworked they had no bandwidth to deal with an unexpected problem… While we were waiting in the lobby, we got to see a lot of issues that were going on with how the place was being run. There was one GM most of that time who was doing all of these things: - Running two escape rooms at the same time - Resetting an escape room for 5 - 10 minutes while still running another room (i.e., not being in the control room to watch the group or give hints or monitor their progress) - Buzzing guests into the locked front door - Asking guests to sign waivers - Giving guests their rules and story introduction for a room (while still running another room!) After about a half hour, the second GM did return to help their poor overworked first GM. After we finally did start our room, there was a point when we needed a clue and asked for one 3 times and were unsurprisingly met with silence. I decided to just exit the room and walk to the control room to let them know. Our GM who had started us on the room wasn’t even in there and the other GM was in the middle of giving a clue to a different room, so I waited for him to finish that before asking for help. Then when we got our clue he gave us a clue to a puzzle we had already solved 5 or 10 minutes prior because he didn’t know where we were. How can they give a subtle clue that doesn’t just give the puzzle away when they haven’t been watching your group and seen what you’ve already tried and how close or not you are, etc. It is just a vastly inferior GM experience to every other escape room I have ever done. And I don’t blame the GMs at all! They were super friendly and kind, despite how much chaos was going on with them not being able to keep up with all of their groups and work being done. The GMs at all 3 60Out rooms that we went to today told us they were extremely busy and were visibly running behind schedule and having trouble keeping up with it all, so I think this is just a very poorly managed company. It feels like the McDonald’s of escape rooms, where they are just trying to churn through people and make money, but don’t care about giving each individual group a quality experience while they are there. That being said, their production quality of their rooms seems to be very good on the whole, so it is tough. I feel like their experiences could be punched up so much by just assigning one GM per group. But perhaps today was a bad day? I am just one data point. As far as this room is concerned, I enjoyed the theme a lot and the puzzles were very fun to do. The props/puzzles were quite unique and I was very excited about that. There were some non-obvious solutions too. They had an automated hint delivery system which I think was overly helpful and sometimes gave us hints after we’d already solved the puzzle they pertained to. But it was a cool way of delivering hints. 🤷🏻‍♀️ If none of the other issues had happened today, I would tell someone who enjoys science or Nikola Tesla inventions that this room is worth doing. But other than that novelty, it was just average.

Tucker was awesome. This game is such a different vibe than other games we've done and definitely worth the play

SO MUCH FUN!

Slightly out-dated room, but with a lot of good clever puzzles. Quite a few puzzles not functioning properly. This room is due for an update.

The room is cool because of some cool and interesting elements that felt like a science museum exhibit meets escape room.

This room was really cool and well themed! However, if you are sensitive to certain smells/smoke I’d skip it or let the GM know. It could take away from the fun!

At times, the room felt like a class lecture on scientific topics. This is not a con, and for this reviewer, I applaud its efforts at fusing learning with play. The room does a fantastic job at demonstrating the various science experiments and lets players interact with them, somewhat like a hands-on science museum. Little placards with background information on each experiment imparts knowledge to those wishing to learn more. Puzzle design leans toward the stronger side, with many of them sticking to the theme of the room. Difficulty varies between easy and medium, but none of them struck me as too difficult. High praise goes to the efforts at making the room more accessible for those with disabilities. One color-based puzzle had the colors paired with numbers, making the puzzle solvable for those with color blindness. I hope to see this trend continue so more people can enjoy these games. However, plot and set design are relegated to the background. The introduction to the story was fun but afterwards didn't really play a part in the room until the very end. The sparsely decorated rooms felt somewhat appropriate, but did not feel lived-in. Props and puzzles jut out as the only decorations in the room, further detaching the players from any immersion. One aspect of rooms I don't like is when they rely on small items that can be easily lost, and sadly this room is guilty of that. One key item of the game is about the diameter of a pencil eraser and can easily be lost if a group is not careful. I recommend smaller groups for this game, as most puzzles are large enough for only 1 or 2 people to operate at a given time. The room is also fairly small, making it harder to move around with more people. Tucker, our gamemaster, was welcoming and friendly. He was attentive during our gameplay; for example, he fixed a malfunctioning prop immediately, saving us from wasted time. He also engaged with my group and I in friendly banter before and after the game, making us feel welcomed. Time Machine is worth a try if you are more interested in puzzles and/or learning and don't mind the lack of atmosphere or decor.

This room was very intricate and tests your knowledge of physics. We had a group of four but noticed that one of the rooms was very physics heavy. I’d say we were able to solve these puzzles based on our basic background in physics.

Okay room, most of the puzzles were super cool and authentic but this made them pretty finicky. The staff is absolutely the nicest here and they elevated our experience. I would still recommend checking the room out because if everything works correctly it’s not bad. However: without spoiling too much, if you are sensitive to weird smells or smoke, I would say to skip it.