AbstractionEliviascapeEscape roomIRLI’ve done over 200 rooms, and actively travel for terpeca level escape rooms mostly in North America. Abstraction - high 4/5 (good room with something distinctive, will happy recommend for traveling enthusiasts). Abstraction is a high concept, immersion focused escape room. The room is definitely meant to be spooky, but for all you scaredy-cats out there (such as myself), it’s pretty tame compared to what’s in Europe, and should not dissuade you from doing the room if you’re into novel escape room experiences. I will say that your enjoyment of the room will largely depend on how into unique spooky atmosphere/immersion you are - you’ll love the room if you are, and might be a bit disappointed if you think puzzles are king and spookiness is a hindrance to puzzle solving since the puzzles were relatively weaker by comparison. Despite not being into spooky stuff, I am into sets and immersion and really liked what they were trying to do with the immersive storytelling in the game - the last act in particular so I liked the game quite a bit.
Mystery At Innsmouth: An Official Arkham Horror Escape RoomHourglass EscapesEscape roomIRLOverall Rating - high 3/5. A decent option for locals, but not something I would go out of my way to go to for enthusiasts. I’ve done around 200 rooms at this point (though not documented in this app yet), and have travelled to most TERPECA rooms in the US, and some abroad. I used to play a lot of Arkham horror, so am definitely the target audience for this room and appreciated all of the references to the IP. The room itself was only okay - worth doing if you are a fan of the IP, but not really worth going out of your way if you are a travelling enthusiast. The puzzles were fine but a bit too simple and follow the instructions style. There were a decent number of them, but none were particularly novel (though there were a couple that had a fun theme and were fine). The set was decent and had a lot of references to Arkham horror but felt a bit too close to your standard Victorian style themed rooms, which is probably the theme I am least into. The Arkham horror touches were nice though. Immersion was a little above average, but relied mostly on narrative voice over and static set pieces. The theme and narrative was a definite improvement over say, your standard The Escape Game level of immersion but (understandably) doesn’t have the wow factor as TERPECA level rooms such as Evil Robots. I was hoping for something higher budget given the license, which probably biased me here.
