The CollectionEnchambered Live Escape Room AdventureEscape roomIRLIt’s hard to say anything negative about enchambered because of their consistency in producing incredible experiences. This game was incredibly well designed in terms of the atmosphere in the set, but there’s a difference between non-linear and just in a completely different category and I think that’s where this one falls. The game is meant for four people at minimum, but I got permission to do it with just my one other friend and myself and while we did escape, and while it was very challenging, it was not necessarily fun at all in my opinion. And here’s why… The puzzles and the tech are incredible themselves, but the lack of logic flow is two extreme to make this a fun and cooperative experience. What it turned into is so many different unrelated pieces that it turned into a divide and conquer where my friend and I quite literally didn’t interact with each other the entire time and instead we’re both working on very significantly different and unconnected puzzles. But not because of strategy or intention, but rather that’s just what had to happen. There was no connection where even I did some puzzles and then he did some puzzles and then we met together to make connections with each other… It was just simply two people in one room doing a bunch of scattered puzzles at the end of the experience him and I were talking, and we both sort of realized that neither of us could even explain what puzzles the other did because there was no need for us to be involved and it wouldn’t have been helpful anyway to do it that way. So if you don’t mind being completely isolated in your workflow, then this room is really brilliant. The variety and the unique quality to each of these puzzles is truly impressive, but even with four people you’re still gonna be doing a division of tasks because there’s really no teamwork or communication required at all for this. Also, I don’t appreciate going to an escape room and having my game master stoned out of their mind to the point where their eyes are practically closed. It completely destroys any professionalism of that company and directly as sex your game experience. Whether something doesn’t trigger immediately or whether your clues are irrelevant or you get no response from the hint system or any of the other related actions by a game master… Yeah, you could argue that it’s because of their experience or the technology or maybe they’re having the off day… But when they are high and you can tell immediately and it radiates off of them in the beginning of their game introduction that automatically becomes the reasoning behind any poor experience. But if you are somebody who appreciates the intricacies of a very complex and high-tech room, this is definitely one of them. There’s no denying how incredible the set is and how unique the variety of puzzles are. I would say it comes down to if that type of gameplay where you’re just utilizing bodies instead of teammates is something that you like doing or not in the furthest thing from a linear game.
Haunted HouseEscapology - SacramentoEscape roomIRLI was pretty blown away when I learned of this place since I had no idea it was in development, but apparently I discovered their location two weeks after they opened. Outside of the handful of technical difficulties during our experience this is a great room and I am very much looking forward to going back to do their remaining ones. And nine in total is a lot of rooms for a single location. Design quality was spectacular for even just the lobby. Very sort of posh and high-end feeling and mix mixed with a very kind and welcoming staff. Each one of them was delightfully, awkward in a nervous but endearing sort of way but that’s to be expected when you are a group of people working in a environment like that after only opening a week or two prior. The game itself… It was just two of us, which is the norm for me, but I would probably recommend three or four as it is their hardest room. It is definitely a scarier vibe in theme, but also the number of jump scares throughout the room. It’s pretty excessive compared to most other experiences so if jump scares are not your thing I would definitely recommend having them disable them. The game was mostly linear and followed a pretty consistent storyline. I would say it was a fairly high-tech room with a few analog moments, but as it stands, some of those components were not functioning and required a level of precision that was not feasible. My biggest downside here or piece of criticism, though is the engagement level of the game master and the knowledge of the game itself. If something is malfunctioning during a game, you would expect a game master to be able to know if what was happening were an object placement issue or a malfunctioning piece of technology, for example. Or if there is a projection of symbols and one of them is missing because the projector itself is broken. Then again you should have somebody running that game who can recognize that as well as opposed to offering a clue for that puzzle that doesn’t address the issue. But again, I imagine with brand new companies that these sort of things are pretty common. I don’t think I’ve ever done an escape room right after they’ve opened. The manager did come into the room at the end and I wanted to address all the misfiring and inconsistencies throughout the room that were pretty obvious which she did seem pretty receptive to. It was odd, though that there were no notes or anything being taken from her to write down or address with engineers later that these things were clearly not working in our crucial to the flow and even success of the game. She did offer us a voucher for a free game, which was very nice, but I would’ve liked to see some more notation of the very specific things that we’re not working in that game, especially if they’re gonna be resetting it for another group. Overall, though if I were to take out the inconsistencies with the tech, which seemed like one off, then I can rate this room pretty high. The low lighting is pretty tricky and flashlights are usually never charged in escape rooms, but it was a fun mix of unexpected reveal and a cool storyline and some challenging unique puzzles. I definitely look forward to coming back to do more this location.
