The CryptEscape Hour AustinEscape roomIRLclosest thing to Legends of the Hidden Temple in real life. so much better than Escape Game. lots of unsolicited hints but they only did it cuz they were sweetie pies. and we technically had 3.5 players cuz Jean is preg but we still made her crawl a bunch!
The BirdMyssTic RoomsEscape roomIRLthis is my least favorite of the 3 MyssTics despite being their highest rated, but it’s such a high floor, dude. a little cramped w/ multiple ppl, and it’s a little inundating w/ info, but still a blast w/ some creative stuff. not a clean escape cuz we got one hide-and-seek hint to find a cypher, plus two unsolicited nudges that we were on a wrong puzzle & that we had already found a key without realizing yet, but given how much time we had left i really wish those weren’t handheld. firm believer that it’s our responsibility to comb thru everything then push thru the head-banging stuff, but all that time can still be well spent since we’re setting up dominos to fall fast later. tl;dr who cares, everyone needs to do all of these rooms
Ghost LightMyssTic RoomsEscape roomIRLthese folks don’t miss. this is a really cool, singular idea with a lot of magic. we had a buzzer-beater photo finish w/ 3 of us (1 who we just met that night), but we got 2 correction hints (for puzzles we understood but executed wrong), so it wasn’t clean, but i didn’t have the heart to tell our game master not to give unsolicited hints this time, so it wasn’t their fault.
InksidiousEscape Room 66 - Los AngelesEscape roomIRLthe gold standard of mom n pop n daughter escape rooms. Tuesday & Taylor were the bomb, we were this room’s 2nd to last game EVER, & we’re going to be making a wknd trip to Laguna to play all their rooms (they’re adding a 4th in Sept). brava 👏👏 they gave us an extra 2 min bc we were close #nohintsneverhints
Montauk ProjectMyssTic RoomsEscape roomIRLstellar. i’m v biased bc i love Stranger Things, but i think this is Mysstic’s best room, and it’s a Top 5 for me all time, currently Top 2, & i’ll save my next Superboost for it unless it gets beat within the month. we got one unsolicited instruction for the final button when we had a ton of time to spare, so that was mildly annoying, but they always mean well, and it didn’t detract. we only had 2 of us (and it was my sister’s first room EVER), but we BLEW thru Phase 1, got roadblocked in Phase 2 by one technical confusion, & Phase 3 had some really cool puzzles i’ve never seen before. all in all, an easy two-person escape clean 👍
Whatever Happened To The Garretts?Maze Rooms - West LAEscape roomIRLHarper was great! needed 2 hints during & got a 3rd after we didn’t escape. no excuse. will do better.
Something's Out There!Maze Rooms - West LAEscape roomIRLHarper was great! 2 hints where we couldn’t find a button then at the very end. good jump-scares!
The CourtyardTHE BASEMENT: A Live Escape Room Experience - SylmarEscape roomIRLmy reviews for all The Basement rooms are gonna be pretty similar. pros: great sets & fun live actors in some rooms. cons: way too short (45 min limit & generally easy to finish even earlier), so not enough puzzles, the puzzles aren’t that creative, the main bottlenecks are not being able to find random things, & too many unsolicited hints from the (albeit very nice & well-intentioned) game masters. with 3 of my inexperienced friends, we were still somehow able to miss the leaderboard by just 30 seconds, so i would have rather gotten less unsolicited hints, even if it took us 15 more minutes, since we had so much time to spare.
