Mark as done to rate
Can your ideas help light out the way in the most exhilarating rooms where you have to solve a mystery in less than 60 minutes?
34 escape rooms
we just didn't find that the room was well designed or structured. the flow did not work, and it required a lot of leaps in judgement or logic to be able to get to the solutions.
Hard
35 escape rooms
So… this is a room that, if I could put a middle ground between thumbs down and thumbs up I’d do it. There were a lot of questionable things, but ultimately, I left with this - if you are expecting a big budget, knock-your-socks-off, wholly unique room… wrong place. BUT if you are looking for somewhere where yes the puzzles are a bit… simple and or questionable (see my main issues in more detail below) but you know that and still want to have fun, this is a good option. Linear, simple concept, but puzzles were fine enough and made sense to where I was fine with it. Noiz and Tati, our lovely game master / check in, were literally stars and I want to model how I talk with guests after them. If anything, come for them.
So, light spoilers as I talk about a couple things. The puzzles themselves were pretty bog-standard - find a key, decrypt this, make this shape to see this, etc. A good amount of puzzles were combos of 2 or 3 things together, which I loved - and it made sense every time. However, there will be one particular thing that you will find very early on that, even though IT SHOULD BE SOLVABLE AND THE OVERALL PUZZLE NEEDS IT SOLVED, you cannot solve it. Pieces don’t move right. That was so annoying to go “I guess we just have to imagine we did this step.” I do not know if it worked at one point and just wore over age or what have you, but please fix that in the first room. Please.
Very basic set of “yeah that’s a cave alright.” Various things were just… exposed and clearly unfinished. Rocks that had places to bolt them into the floor just… weren’t. That’s literally 1-2 hours work. It’s lazy to a point of being annoying and distracting, especially when puzzles require things like that in specific places to make sense. You were always aware you were just in a basement in Philly.
Easily the standout. Maybe it’s because my group was essentially a perfect blend of queer, neurodivergent, theatre kid, and Gen Z (look we all played a murder mystery game online together - that just happens) but like genuinely Noiz and Tati were the best GMs I’ve had playing a game period. They clearly cared about us, they were funny and irreverent, and they were on it with hints and knowing where we were in the room. I genuinely cannot praise them enough.
No
If you can think of what might happen at a dig site that went wrong, you know how it goes.
Less of a story, more of a “here’s a list of things to do”. If we were not told the literal objective going in, I would not be able to tell you what any of it meant nor why when we finished when we finished.
Hard
This is a purely linear game. You do one thing, you get the next thing done. We might as well have had the list told to us at the start handed to us. A lot of the objectives are 2 or 3 step things where “using A and B, you can create a code C to plug into thing D”. That I did like - however, with that comes “you miss this thing? Well dang - you better figure it out!” Plus, that one puzzle I keep mentioning really feels like it was made artificially more difficult by being “not completable” vs just having it work as intended. With smart use of your hints, you’ll be fine - just maybe not a 2-3 person room for inexperienced players.
Mechanical
There is two elements of this game that aren’t just lock and key or paper and pencil, and it’s just a couple sensors. You are not coming here for high-tech.
6
You are going to have to communicate over long distances. We ended up having a chain of 2 people in each of 3 locations at various points, which I think was pretty perfect.
Not scary
I can’t see anyone getting scared at any point unless you don’t like caves.
8
Kids at any age can definitely help… but like not really solve it. I cannot see a group of under 13’s solving various puzzles, but with an experienced teen or adult, it’ll be fine.
Yes
There’s one particular thing I keep mentioning that was MAYBE broken that was 100% required. If it wasn’t, it feels broken and unfun to play with. If it was, please fix it. Beyond that, everything else felt fine - maybe hide some of the things with completely open backs and bolt down some rocks.
No
Not at all
If you can move between rooms, you can do everything. I’d say walking down the stairs to get to the overall place is more physically active.
One puzzle requires color. Other than that one thing, 100% fine.
Yes
There are signs leading you from outside to past reception (who will also help) to down the rainbow-lit stairs. You can’t get lost unless you’re trying to.
Easy
It’s downtown Philly. There are tons of parking garages surrounding the place within a quarter of a mile. Place itself does not have parking.
T
107 escape rooms
TLDR: Awful, avoid. Hoooo boy… this was a rooough one. Arrived on time to no one there, no one answering the phone. Gamemasters shows up 15 minutes after our start time surprised to see anyone because they didn’t check the bookings. Given the brief spiel before being led to the room, wherein the timer was already going with 5 minutes down. At no point did we have any idea what we were supposed to be doing. Every puzzle was either poorly or just not clued. The first obvious puzzle you solve is not used until the end of the room. If the room wasn’t already terrible, the game master was openly antagonistic. She at point said “I’m looking at the puzzle you need to solve right now, it’s definitely in the room.” That was a hint on what to work on next. We had 3 rooms open to us… Absolutely no flow to puzzles, no rhyme or reason to the things you do. Just abysmal puzzle design. Very hostile feeling, designer vs player architecture. Strongly do not recommend for anyone but the most masochistic puzzlers. If you want to feel like and be treated like a dummy dumb dumb for not knowing the designers intent, have at it.
We got punk’d
105 escape rooms
Bottom of the barrel. Truly a nightmare of a room. Set design was probably rad in 2015, but time has not been kind and you are walking into a worn out, messy wreck of an experience. Mind boggling puzzle “design.” A very intense game of guess what’s in my pocket. Terrible signposting, obscure pathways between puzzles, constant bottlenecking, zero feedback upon completion of a puzzle. You name an escape design principle and I guarantee you will be disappointed by the way it’s executed here. The coup de grace is the antagonistic relationship between you and the GM. This is not a game where you are going to get hinted your way to victory. Their expectation is clearly that a large percentage of teams will simply fail; and I want to say if you experienced this room and you didn’t escape, absolve yourself. It truly was not your fault. Needs an immediate overhaul; go across the street and sit in the park for an hour instead.
No
Expert
Mechanical
3
Not scary
13
No
No
Not at all
No
Limited
D
45 escape rooms
Not a fan. The room felt like it was falling apart and without clues it was next to impossible to figure out what to do. Was also told going in that we'd get hints every 10 minutes if we were stuck but only ever received 2 hints even though we obviously didn't know what to do. Do not recommend.
107 escape rooms
This room was very tough! It was me & one other person. You definitely need a big group for this room. We didn’t complete it but we had an amazing time! The room was very immersive & the atmosphere felt very true to theme! One of the best rooms of its theme! I would definitely recommend for larger groups.
Showing results 1-6 of 6
