MagnificoEscaparium - LavalEscape roomIRLMagnifico is a masterpiece. It transcends expectations in every way. The production value is off the charts; it truly feels like stepping into another world—not a room that's been crafted to look like another world. It tells a complete story using actors who deliver nuanced and believable performances. The puzzles are challenging, clever, and seamlessly woven into the narrative. For those who think they don't like escape rooms, Magnifico is an escape room in the same way that a 30-second, black-and-white, silent film from the early 1900s and a 3D, full-color, digital IMAX film are both movies. It is delightful and beautiful and fun and exciting and magical. Playing it was an experience I will pack away in my trunk of best lifetime memories. Magnifico would have earned a perfect score, but for some fairly extensive physical demands. Much of the game offers places to sit down, but there is no way to play without climbing stairs. A well-earned final grade. A+
La Cathédrale Oubliée [The Forgotten Cathedral]Escaparium - LavalEscape roomIRLAn opportunity to explore the ruins of a mysterious cathedral with a disturbing history. Who doesn’t want to do that? The narrative for this game is brilliantly woven into Escaparium’s facility, and the art direction is outstanding. Gameplay is pretty linear but requires quite a bit of teamwork at times. GM interaction is integrated into the environment, and the game is extremely immersive. This game requires a high amount of physicality, but it does have places to sit down. The sound mixing could also be improved; difficulty hearing voices over the music detracted from the overall experience. High scores in production value, immersion, and novelty are offset by the game’s physical demands and sound mixing issues. Final grade. B
Armoire à Vendre [Wardrobe for Sale]Escaparium - LavalEscape roomIRLLovely game with a complete story, distinct characters, and high-quality, immersive sets. GM interaction is fun and integrated into the environment. Puzzles for the most part are engaging; there are a lot of set pieces to interact with early on, allowing teams to split up and tackle different challenges. Gameplay becomes more linear later, which leaves members of a larger team without anything to do. Signposting in general could also be improved to guide players to next steps and reduce frustration. The game requires low physicality, but there are no good places to sit down. The sound mixing (or maybe it was the hardware?) could also be improved to ensure that everyone can hear and understand everything. In spite of some minor gameplay frustrations, this game still earns a high final grade thanks to high scores in production value, novelty, immersion, and story. Final grade. A
A Pirate's CurseEscapology - LeawoodEscape roomIRLLovely facility and fantastic customer service. Clean, attractive, spacious lobby. Polished video production, immersive art direction, well-maintained sets and props. We enjoyed Pirate's Curse, although gameplay is linear, so we found our team of seven players was too large. Puzzles in Pirate's Curse aren't extremely challenging, but there is some variety in style, and they are nicely crafted. Physical demands are minimal; one player must crawl, but not everyone must do so. There is no place to sit down. Our biggest frustration was that the combination locks have tiny numbers on them that are very hard to see in low lighting and are very difficult to manipulate and get set correctly. Final grade. B
Bernie Bloc [Bernie Block]Escaparium - LavalEscape roomIRLFor experienced escape room players, Bernie Block is likely to be too easy, but the game would be a terrific introduction to escape rooms for children. The story is simple, the set is cute (although a little worn), and the puzzles aren’t too challenging. The game has no stairs or other physical challenges, and there is a place to sit down. Final grade. B
The Manhattan ProjectFull Moon EscapeEscape roomIRLExperience. Overall, we had a lot of fun playing this room, in spite of some fairly significant shortcomings.. One team member even dubbed it his favorite room of those he’s played. The environment and opportunities for team members to manipulate many different unique set and prop pieces are the definite highlights. Story. This is not a story-driven game. The scenario presented by the game master prior to the game provides a justification for our presence in the environment. Once in the room, however, no further effort is made to support that scenario. Challenges. The room contains multiple padlocks and keypads, but there are also some really fun set pieces and props to interact with. The game is driven more by accomplishments than “a-ha” moments. Accessibility. The room itself is pretty accessible. It requires no climbing or crawling, it’s well lit, and there are no items that must be manipulated at floor level. There are sound effects, but they are not so loud that they interfere with team interaction. It is important to note, however, that in order to get to the part of the building that houses the escape rooms, players must ascend multiple sets of stairs. Production value. This is where this room really shines. The set and props are fantastic. The game contains a ton of stuff to look at and interact with, and all that stuff looks really cool. Immersion. While the set and props are truly impressive, more effort could have gone into making the space actually look and feel abandoned (as presented in the scenario). The time period of the environment is well established, but certain elements are not consistent with the presumed time in which the players are interacting with that environment. Novelty. Because the set and prop design are so impressive, the room has a unique feel to it. Activities are pretty classic escape room challenges, but they’re presented in a fun and occasionally surprising way. Gameplay. This is the one area where I was disappointed. Our game master was delightfully enthusiastic, friendly, and welcoming, but getting her attention once the game started was difficult. The delay in waiting for her response was long enough that we weren’t sure if she had heard us, and her responses were read from a pre-written clue, rather than answering the question we had asked. Signposting in the room is almost nonexistent. One challenge in particular requires players to make a connection between elements for which there is no indication that a relationship exists, and the “which padlock does this four-digit code open” game is not a puzzle - it’s just a tedious exercise. There’s also one padlock that is never used, which added significantly to the feeling of scrambling with no sense of purpose or progress. More frustratingly, when events were triggered, it was often not clear that anything had happened, leaving us unaware that we had progressed to the next step; a great deal of time was wasted assuming our solution or code was incorrect and searching for another solution when we’d actually already completed the task. Better environmental clues or (at the very least) more active game master attention could alleviate this frustration. Final grade. B-
High Noon in the Old WestTime To Escape - Downtown AtlantaEscape roomIRLWithout question, this is the worst escape room I have ever played. Experience. Frankly, unacceptable. Neither escape room enthusiasts nor new players should book this room. It fails on every level. I am saddened by the thought that people new to escape rooms might book this experience and think that this is what escape rooms are like. The fact that the operators of this facility a) don’t care enough about their current customers to repair and improve their game and b) have no concern about the escape room industry losing potential future customers tells me that they are not in the business to entertain and delight anyone. There is no way that someone who actually loves immersive experiences and puzzles would even consider allowing unsuspecting customers to play this catastrophe, much less pay money for it! Story. It seemed that this game had a story at one time, and we were given an introduction that provided a sort of weak objective, but there was no effort to integrate room elements into any kind of cohesive narrative. Everything felt incredibly random. So random, in fact, that it was quickly apparent that we were not playing the game as it was originally designed. Production Value. Appalling. This may have been an adequate, cookie-cutter room at one time - nothing spectacular, but undoubtedly up to the standards of most basic escape rooms. However, over time, the props and sets have been destroyed by players and technical elements have broken. And rather than making repairs, the operators have left all the broken elements in place and made the cheapest, easiest changes they could to overcome the fact that almost all the props, set pieces, and puzzles are no longer usable. Immersion. None. The set pieces are broken. There are sections of wallpaper that have been ripped off by previous players. The props are worn. There’s a hole in the ceiling. Replacement puzzle elements are cheap and not thematically consistent, including instructions written on a laminated piece of paper with no effort to even make it look like part of the game world. Gameplay. The room is full of red herrings because it still contains props, signposting, and clues to puzzles that no longer exist - elements that are no longer used because the original puzzle to which they belonged has been scrapped. There are no a-ha moments because technical elements that should be triggered upon reaching the right solution no longer work; instead (as explained by the game master prior to starting the game) players must manually enter each solution into a prop that was clearly once a single, unique puzzle (the cabinet in which it is housed obviously once opened at the appropriate time, but now it is already open when the players enter the room). Our game master was an incredibly enthusiastic, friendly, eager young man who truly wanted us to have a good time. He had a tough job because he had to explain the workaround solution checker before the game began. Unfortunately, I don’t think our game was the only one he was in charge of because when we called for help, there was often a delay, and when he did respond, he didn’t know what we had already tried or what step we were on. Honestly, the thing that makes me most sad about this game is that anyone new to escape rooms will think this is the norm and never play another escape room again. For experienced players, it was just infuriating. There were puzzles that required manually figuring out patterns with physical objects, but the physical objects were in such bad shape that even arranging them correctly didn’t reveal anything useful. There was no way to tell what to engage with and what to ignore. There was no way to tell if we were stuck because we had solved a puzzle incorrectly or if we were trying to solve a puzzle that no longer exists. Final grade. F - if there were a grade lower than F, I would give it that. It was an exercise in futility and frustration and a complete waste of time and money.
![La Cathédrale Oubliée [The Forgotten Cathedral]](https://res.cloudinary.com/mortyapp/image/upload/c_limit,w_260/f_auto/v1/store/s/2c2890dd-87b6-4712-8136-8403e436ec72.jpg)
![Armoire à Vendre [Wardrobe for Sale]](https://res.cloudinary.com/mortyapp/image/upload/c_limit,w_260/f_auto/v1/store/s/02541450-7205-4371-935f-ae98c672dcbb.jpeg)
![Bernie Bloc [Bernie Block]](https://res.cloudinary.com/mortyapp/image/upload/c_limit,w_260/f_auto/v1/store/s/16c27c0f-0175-46db-9f71-6b8f22b33b87.jpg)
