Haunted House

It was a good game.... challenging.

We had a lot of fun with this one. We’ve done a lot of their rooms and are familiar with their style so that helped us. We were expecting big leaps but it was fine. It was definitely on the easy side. I liked how the layout of the space was a little different from their down and back format. Everything made sense. The production was good. There were some pretty fun reveals. More startling than scary. I just didn’t like that we could see normal ceilings up top. This was definitely one of their better rooms. I still think the price for their rooms is too high. I’ve done some rooms that are priced the same but were definitely worth it. They do offer great discounts if you book another room afterwards. We took advantage of that :-)!

Fun, linear-style room. More spooky than scary.

This game has different types of puzzles to solve that you get to use your senses. Not too scary and there are no live actors.

Wanted this to be better, the theming here is great and lots of good creepy atmosphere. However, the staff seem to hate it here and the room fell a bit flat in the gameplay, because the game lacks flow. Its not fun to have to figure out what you should be doing, or solve a puzzle but not have a place that makes sense to input what you've found. The puzzles feel difficult more because they are vague as opposed to challenging, and require hints in order to make sense. Hopefully they make some tweaks to help it flow better in the future. For the moment I can't recommend it at its current price, plus you have to pay a lot to park. Maybe if youre already at Universal and have a discount it could be worth trying.

The room has a lot of potential but also many problems. We started the room 15 minutes later than our scheduled time because the previous group did not come out on time, which caused a delay to our next activity. The room is located right next to the lobby, and the lobby music is so loud that it completely ruins the horror atmosphere. One of the puzzles even requires careful listening, which becomes almost impossible with the music playing outside. Several of the books on the bookshelf were broken, and it looked like the game master had been forcing them open. A couple of puzzles were solved purely by “luck” or seemed to work miraculously without explanation. When we asked for hints, the game master gave us the full solutions instead of guiding us, which was not helpful at all. When I ask for a hint, I want direction on how to find the code, not the code itself. Very unprofessional. If I wanted the full solution, I would have asked for it. We escaped about ten minutes before our time was up, mostly because of the lack of proper support. It also felt like we were the last group of the night, and they were rushing to finish. You spend a lot of money on these experiences, and they should never make you feel rushed or disappointed. Overall: Disappointing.

I loved the atmosphere and overall vibe of the room. Was very espooky but puzzles were simple and straight forward. Spent more time being scared rather than figuring things out.

Some puzzles didn’t make you feel accomplish or didn’t push you through the game. A lot of story points and reading material that weren’t clues. Also super annoying

Honestly, this would be my last room at Escapology. My experience with them (the Universal location) has been poor to average so far and it’s a combination of service + puzzle designs. If you had to do only a couple of rooms here, I would recommend doing this one and Who Stole Mona Lisa. Haunted House at the very least delivered on spooky. There were a couple of puzzles that I particularly liked here (hint: diorama) so that moves this room up in terms of rankings for me. There were still some leaps in logic but less so than the other rooms.

You know when you’re like “I can’t prove it but I’m 99% sure whatever I did was supposed to work but it didn’t so the GM is secretly triggering it after the fact to make me look crazy?” That happened a few times, and seems to be a running theme based on our 2 trips here so far. Always treated incredibly by staff, will for sure keep returning to tackle all of them, but it appears this will be the vibe each time we come. But to answer your question: yes, that house is for SURE haunted