awk

Reviews

a
Morty score73
  • Escape rooms73

awk

    Ahmad

    The Ladder

    The Ladder

    Hatch Escapes

    • Escape room
    • IRL
    I really wanted to love this room. Upon entering, I was told not to treat it like other escape rooms, which is always a good sign if you’re being asked to change your expectations right? But you know what, I gave them the benefit of the doubt and eliminated all expectations and approached it as a “hey I’m just going to have some fun with my friends” and even then… I found that this a terrible way to spend $100 and 90m of your time. Take your money, go to Dave & Busters, and you will have a very similar experience to that of the Ladder, which is really more of a collective of arcade games than it is an escape room. Technical issues: So okay, fine it’s not an escape room… it’s an immersive experience with some games in it… if you’re going to charge people $100 and expect them to come back again, make sure there are no technical issues. In each of the 5 sections of the experience, we had at least 1 technical issue with our GM having to come in and reset a module or just give us credit for the module because it stopped working. Charge me $100, there is a bunch of technical issues, then you want me to come back and go through the same thing again? Pretty ironic to have a game that makes fun of capitalism only to then treat this like a way to trick people to spend more and more money for an experience that doesn’t work. This is the opposite of the Nest and Lab Rats rooms (which btw both felt like very meaningful experiences, and the Nest is also not a traditional escape room!). Lack of clear narrative: Technical issues aside, the room felt like it was a very ambitious idea and the creators failed to actually follow through with their ambitious vision and execute all the finer details which is why the experience comes off as a chaotic arcade with a “story” in the background rather than a cohesive narrative. If I’m giving you $100, even if it’s not a traditional escape room, I think it is fair to expect a clear story and a seamless bug-free experience. Money-bait puzzles: From a puzzle perspective, most of the puzzles were so difficult for the time given that it felt pointless to even do them. I quote our GM here that the puzzles “are not designed to be solved in a single play through, the intention is it takes multiple plays to solve” which makes me ask the question, why the heck am I even bothering to do the puzzles then? Am I supposed to pay $200 to do the puzzles over two tries? $300 over three tries? How much money do I have to spend to actually to properly do this room? Again, the irony of making fun of capitalism. Either have the puzzles and make it possible to do on one go, or ditch the puzzles and call it what it is… a sequence of arcade games. Conclusion: Overall, I’ve done hundreds of escape rooms and this was by far one of my least favorite rooms I’ve ever done. My expectations were so high and even when I lowered them, it was hard to leave that room feel anything other than sheer disappointment and a waste of money.