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ebroder

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@ebroder
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ebroder

Evan Broder (he/him) | San Francisco

https://ebroder.net

@hashtagjohnpaul@kitchenettekat
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Heresy: 1897 [Immersive Theatre]

Heresy: 1897 [Immersive Theatre]

Doors Of Divergence

  • Escape room
  • IRL
Heresy was a ton of fun and is, I think, as yet, still under appreciated. It is, first and foremost, an extraordinarily ambitious concept, but beyond that it’s also just a great escape room with fun puzzles, great scenery, and an uncommon approach to acting, roleplaying, and game mastering. Without a doubt, my favorite part of Heresy (and of Doors of Divergence generally) is the concept. As you play the escape room, you make decisions which affect the story and the progression of the escape room. Sometimes you know that you’re making a critical decision, other times you don’t even realize it. All of these decisions combine to make 4 different possible endings for Heresy. And not only that, but the specific ending you experience affects the start of their second room (Madness), which has *even more* possible endings. Wild. In fact, based on a choice you make early on, you only see about 1/2 of the puzzles, rooms, and content. I want to play it again to see the other half. I want to play their other rooms. Multiple times. They reward you afterwards by showing you a flow chart of roads taken (or I would say, taunt you with roads _not_ taken). I think I might have the same problem with Doors of Divergence that I have with, say, an Assassin’s Creed game - there’s too much content and I _have_ to see it all! When you arrive at Doors of Divergence, you first check in and leave your bags/coats at the front. Then you go into the Paradox Lounge, where an actor gives you a drink and a rules briefing. While the bag/coat check attendants are out of character, the bartender is in character. It’s an effective way to acclimate you to the mild roleplaying of the game in a low-stakes situation and move you into the magic circle of Doors of Divergence’s world. The game itself was really enjoyable. The sets are extremely immersive, in a sort of theatrical way (the sets have no ceilings, and there’s no attempt to hide the theater-style lights and lighting rails above), and all of the props felt high quality. The puzzles were fun and unique - I felt like they were a little harder than average but certainly not impossible. And while the rooms clearly used a lot of technology, you didn’t notice wires or switches; everything felt diegetic. Heresy has an in-character combo actor/gamemaster who starts the game in the room with you and comes and goes throughout. Throughout the game they both attempt to pull you into roleplay with them but also heighten the tension of the story. My group was…frankly a little weak on the roleplay, so we struggled to match the intensity that our “proctor” brought with them, but by the middle of the game they established a sort of so-serious-it’s-a-little-silly vibe that I enjoyed. I sort of accidentally ended up with a full team of 8 people. While we had a great time, it was frankly too many people. Heresy is probably best with 3-5, maybe 6. But overall, this is definitely an experience worth having at least once. Maybe twice. And I can’t wait to see their second and third game.
Whatever Happened To The Garretts?

Whatever Happened To The Garretts?

Maze Rooms - West LA

  • Escape room
  • IRL
I really enjoyed this game. The setup seems a little bland, but the room is not. There's a good variety of puzzles that are challenging without being impossible, and a handful of very satisfying moments. Our GM was great - very welcoming and clearly paying attention; when we asked for hints they were well-tailored to the type and amount of help we needed. There are a bunch of easter eggs hidden throughout the room in homage to the particular genre and era that the room is channeling - I won't say more to avoid spoilers, but definitely ask your GM to point them out.
Whatever Happened To The Garretts?

Whatever Happened To The Garretts?

Maze Rooms - West LA

  • Escape room
  • IRL
The Cutting Room

The Cutting Room

Locked In Edinburgh

  • Escape room
  • IRL
The Cutting Room was a challenging but enjoyable puzzling experience. There’s a really satisfying variety of puzzles without being short on cluing or signposting. My only complaint was that the space becomes somewhat stuffy - I might be inclined to say that it impacted our solving in the back half of the game, although realistically we were as much to blame as the environment. Otherwise I had a blast (although I think I probably liked The Secret Lab more)
Smugglers Den

Smugglers Den

Escape My Room

  • Escape room
  • IRL
This room was really enjoyable. It benefits a lot from the shorter length (45 minutes), since it can remain novel without exhausting its schtick. I really appreciated the way that this room used some common escape room concepts in new and exciting ways, since you can’t read anything. We played with 2 and found that to be good.
The Secret Lab

The Secret Lab

Locked In Edinburgh

  • Escape room
  • IRL
The Secret Lab was delightful. It was fast-paced and engaging with a great mix of puzzles and several very satisfying moments. There were a few specific puzzles that were unlike anything I’ve seen elsewhere, and overall there was a ton of variety in what we were asked to do. They made excellent use of a space with a very unique history. Our GM was excellent - friendly and accommodating and clearly paying attention to our gameplay - and the mechanism for delivering clues to players was a real joy.
Red Giant

Red Giant

Quest Room - Hollywood

  • Escape room
  • IRL
Going in, I really wanted to like Red Giant. The story, theme, and set were all really impressive and up my alley. However, we had a pretty rough game. In general, I don’t like to leave bad reviews just because the puzzles didn’t click with me, but in this case, there were problems with the maintenance of the room and our GM experience that felt like they went beyond that. I’ll start with what was good: the sets were great as was the overall ambiance. There were great story beats at the beginning, middle, and end. There were several cool moments where solving a puzzle triggered some sort of large physical mechanism. You definitely wondered if you were going to trigger some sort of mummy’s curse. Less good: the mechanism to move from the first room to the second room - the one that triggered the great story beat at the beginning - was just broken. I spent 2-3 minutes fiddling with it to make sure I wasn’t missing some aspect of how it worked. Eventually our GM intervened and manually triggered the unlock. The resulting show scene was cool, but was undercut by my frustration with the mechanism. Obviously it would be ideal if the mechanism worked, but if it’s broken, I would expect the GM to know and intervene much more aggressively. And the ugly: several of the puzzles in the room felt to me like they lacked adequate signposting. It felt like there was a goal of avoiding text in English to avoid breaking immersion, but the end result was that it was just hard to tell what to do. One puzzle traded on a common puzzle type, but with an extra mechanic that wasn’t clued. We only learned the extra mechanic when we asked for a hint in frustration - I felt like that information should have been clued in the room or volunteered by the GM when it was clear we otherwise knew what to do. Another required extracting information that we could barely see, even with 3 people staring at it. Given how fiddly so many of the puzzles were, I would have preferred to see much more active babysitting by our GM, who instead was almost entirely hands-off unless we explicitly asked for help. My advice to others would be to approach Red Giant as a story to experience rather than a puzzle to solve and aggressively ask for hints. With that approach, I think you might have a better time than we did.
Strange Magic

Strange Magic

Mind Masters

  • Escape room
  • IRL
I loved this game, and I think a lot of people miss what makes it so amazing. Strange Magic understands how misdirection works in magic better than any other magic-themed escape room I’ve done. From the moment you walk in, this game misdirects you. It starts with the set, which fools you into thinking you’re playing an old-school locks-and-boxes room and goes on to…well, a magician never reveals their secrets, I guess. I can’t say whether every misdirect was intentional, but either way, it _works_. People praise Strange Magic for its tech (which is surprisingly great) and its puzzles (which are beautifully on theme), but I think most people overlook just how effectively this game misdirects you the entire time you’re playing it. It’s not big and over the top in a traditional sense, but it’s still chock full of big ideas - you just have to pay attention. I think this is one of the best games in the Orlando area, and the owners were a true delight to talk with afterwards. I can’t wait to see what they do next.
Alien Encounter

Alien Encounter

Clue Carré

  • Escape room
  • IRL
This was a really well-executed game with good sets, puzzles that didn’t feel stale, and technology that heightened the experience. It requires bringing a lot of information back and forth between rooms (and warns you of that up front). I sometimes find that frustrating, but here it worked for me. It also meant that it helped to have a larger team, as there was a lot of information to share back and forth.
The Bookie

The Bookie

Clue Carré

  • Escape room
  • IRL
I found this game to be really enjoyable - probably my favorite of the two at Surge. Our team hit a pretty good flow state and managed to make it through without any major search failures or other stoppages. The puzzles seemed well-clued and well-signposted, and the theming was a fun take on a “casino heist” style of game.
Il Laboratorio di Frankenstein Jr. [The Laboratory of Frankenstein Jr.]

Il Laboratorio di Frankenstein Jr. [The Laboratory of Frankenstein Jr.]

Cogito Ergo Room

  • Escape room
  • IRL
I really liked Frankenstein Jr. It managed to do a lot with a little - mostly, I think, due to a GM that was both extremely diligent and extremely talented. Frankenstein Jr. is themed after the Mel Brooks movie Young Frankenstein (the title was translated into Italian as “Frankenstein Jr.”). I didn’t realize that in advance, but it’s full of jokes and references. It does have a few moments designed to startle you, but it wasn’t at all scary and those moments were mostly quite funny immediately after they had passed. The game is playable in English, though you should confirm on WhatsApp before booking as I think it may depend on staffing. Not everything is translated into English - there are a few printed/laminated sheets with instructions that were fully translated, but any labels on objects in the room remained in Italian. Most of the words are similar enough to their English words that it shouldn’t be problematic, and I suspect that the GM would help if (e.g.) you didn’t know Italian numbers. In my opinion, this room punches above its weight class. When we got a look at the GM console after the game, it was clear that rather than automating everything or wiring up Arduinos or whatever, Cogito Ergo Room often relied on the GM to manually trigger certain things that couldn’t be automated, including triggering sound cues when we solved something. I’ve seen this go poorly in the past, but here it was seamless and effective. We were never left wondering if we had correctly solved a puzzle. This also meant that he could compensate when a puzzle wasn’t quite working correctly (there were a few that seemed a little flaky) Similarly, the set did not feel like it was produced on, say, a Disney budget, but still had a ton of really good detail work. There was a really well done fireplace effect that I quite liked, and I noticed a lot of small things like weathering on the air conditioning unit. In addition to effectively running the game, our GM also intermittently joined us in the room, acting as Igor (“eye-gore”), either for story moments or to make sure that a mechanism was working correctly. He told us afterwards that it was only the second time he had done the room in English instead of Italian and I was shocked. He was in-character, funny, responsive, attentive, and entertaining the entire time. (I wish I remembered his name to give him credit!) The game had a good story arc, with tension increasing as you get towards the end (again, helped by Igor). There was a good balance of puzzles of manageable difficulty. Overall, I would definitely recommend Frankenstein Jr. if you’re in Rome and have some extra time. I was not disappointed.
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