jharkey4

Reviews

Reviews

Shadow Zen: The Vanishing Monk

Shadow Zen: The Vanishing Monk

Escape Portal

  • Escape room
  • IRL
My wife and I have experience with nearly 50 rooms and like to visit new ones when we travel. We landed on this one for Bangkok after seeing so many positive reviews. The reviews are entirely accurate. This is a fantastic room. The ambience is fantastic throughout. Each phase was solid. The puzzles were creative and fun to solve. They weren't terribly difficult, which is fine when they're unique enough that solving them feels satisfying. Multiple cases where figuring out the trick made me smile. Everything worked well and was in good shape as well. Truly one of the best rooms we've experienced.
Nowhere To Be Found

Nowhere To Be Found

Trapped In The Upstate - Inman [prev. Great Escapes Inman]

  • Escape room
  • IRL
Staff was very friendly and the gamemaster did a fantastic job. This room is better than average, though nothing distinctly special. I say that primarily because it relies too much on locks (most clues simply lead directly to a key or combination which gives you access to the next clue) and is very linear. This is their first room and the owner is aware of those flaws. They're a bit off the beaten path and get a lot of newbies, which I imagine this style is great for. We had a fun time with the room regardless. Some of the puzzles were satisfying to solve and the atmosphere was great. There's a bit of a horror element involved, but no jump scares. I'm really excited to come back and visit their other room, which I fully expect to love.
Vanishing Act

Vanishing Act

Black Mountain Escape

  • Escape room
  • IRL
Another fantastic room by Black Mountain Escape! I think this is the most *whimsical* room we've done before, and we really loved that part about it. This is hard to explain without spoilers, but I'll just say that there are some delightful moments in the experience that perfectly capture the feeling of a classic magic show. Multiple moments putting a smile on your face just as when a magician pulls a rabbit out of his hat and you don't know how it got there. Very on-theme, and well done. The puzzles in this room were also very satisfying to solve. Many that were very creative and all of them felt logical and rewarding. We did have a moment or two where we accidentally guessed a clue or solved it in a way not intended, but it didn't feel too upsetting among so many good ones. We had a different game master from our first time, and he was just as friendly as the first. He actually greeted us by name when we arrived and apparently looked up we had done one of their rooms previously 1.5 years ago. I don't think I've ever received such a personal welcome at an escape room before. He was a fun actor as part of the experience. I especially appreciated the magic tricks he began with which were mostly unrelated to the room except in the way they set the tone and theme. Quality experience that you don't get most places. My one main negative remark is, just as with the first room we did, this one is a *bit* run down. The props show wear, and some items show abuse. Extremely minor complaint here.
Castle Flüffendor

Castle Flüffendor

Escape Artist Greenville - Hampton Station

  • Escape room
  • IRL
A masterclass, as always from Escape Artist. The production value is unparalleled. Creative puzzles that were fun to solve. Perhaps a bit on the easy side, as we never got stuck long enough to consider asking for a clue (three people with lots of experience), but not so easy that they weren't rewarding. I'd highly recommend this one to people trying out rooms with actors for the first time. They primarily interact with you as puppets in this one and the atmosphere isn't tense, which I think makes that experience more relaxed. Also a very family friendly room.
Gefängnis [Prison]

Gefängnis [Prison] - CLOSED

Fox In A Box Munchen

  • Escape room
  • IRL
As someone with 30 escape rooms of experience, this was a good one. We did the Prison room with three people. It was a bit easy for us, but probably perfect for most people. The puzzles were all mostly creative and logical. The rooms had decent production value. (The venue itself was very nicely furnished.) Staff was very friendly. We did have a technology bug... The room uses an electronic device for communicating clues. It wasn't working properly and the game master wasn't aware. Fortunately we didn't need clues, and I would think this is not a normal occurrence.
Flucht Aus Der Anstalt [Escape From The Institution]

Flucht Aus Der Anstalt [Escape From The Institution]

Mystery Rooms - Interlaken CH

  • Escape room
  • IRL
My wife and I have about 30 rooms of experience and wanted to do one on a rainy vacation day in Interlaken. We picked "Flucht aus der Anstalt". Production value was not great, but also common for this price point. Which is to say the experience isn't very immersive—you feel like you're in an apartment in Interlaken, not a mental hospital. The puzzles are mostly just okay. Some of them we thought were very unintuitive. (Confusing or misleading riddles.) The main issue we had was with our game master. There was a bit of a language barrier. Our game master wasn't very confident in her English. I can understand that's tricky, but I felt like it made her very shy and hesitant to speak with us. The room also had no kind of clue system—the game master would just come in the room and talk to us if we needed help. So it was that when we got stuck (on poorly designed puzzles) she would just come into the room, tell us something not especially helpful, and dip back out. In at least two cases she gave us a clue for something we had already figured out. For example, we had solved the code for a lock, but the lock was just a bit jammed. She came in and said something that had us thinking the code wasn't meant for the lock when she left. In one case she told us not to worry about one puzzle. Not sure why. I wish we had understood her discomfort and the clue system earlier. I would have been more forceful with showing her what we had done and held on to her longer to make sure we were on the right path. I wouldn't entirely recommend against this place. I think if I were to do a second room with the same gamemaster, knowing what I do now, it would have been passable.
Terre En Vue! [Land in Sight!]

Terre En Vue! [Land in Sight!]

A Double Tour - La Distillerie Stadaconé

  • Escape room
  • IRL
Wanted to come to the distillery and we love escape rooms, so figured this was worth a run. The atmosphere and quality was fantastic, if perhaps a bit *too* polished. We didn't love that the host was in the room *with* us. (I guess they didn't have a system to give clues from outside? They wanted to be helpful and welcoming, but it made us feel nervous and awkward.) They also had us paired with another couple who only spoke French. (we only speak English.) That didn't work well. Puzzles were okay, wished it were longer.