Ruins of the Mystic TempleRabbit Hole Recreation ServicesEscape roomIRLThis room is top notch--I'm writing this review five years after completing it and still have strong impressions for how good the set design and puzzle elements are. Really awesome puzzle progression and S-tier set design.
Kitchen ChaosPuzzlers EscapeEscape roomIRLOne of my favorites! Worked really well with a large group, clever parallel path designs, has a good mix of tactcile/brain puzzles and some physical prop/mechanics I've never seen before (like smell). Good use of ambience and lighting queues. Our group size did steamroller it a bit, but we had a great time. Owners were super friendly and gave us a discount for finishing early haha.
Inblack DetectiveINBLACK Escape Room - Eaton CenterEscape roomIRLtldr--AI slop (assets and likely the entire thing), owners shadow banned my review on Google lmao. Sooooo lazy. This was a genuinely infuriating and bad escape room, inexcusably sparse, basically a scam. This is rated on the Inblack website as 5 stars for puzzle density and "heavy logic deduction and teamwork". How?? Genuinely my hatred for this room made me join this app (silver linings). Our experience had legitimately 5 moments I would consider puzzles, most of which were very low effort both to create and solve. I would also consider these a generous definition of "puzzle"--once we found them, we solved all but one in 30 seconds or less. Two of the five puzzles revolved around adding 1 digit numbers together; two of the puzzles required following instructions with basic props; the remaining puzzle used a very basic (yet needlessly confusing?) cipher. The furniture and clues were damaged, and the drawer containing the final clue was unlocked the entire time and had a note asking us to wait until we found the key rather than a functional locking mechanism. The narrative was driven by AI voice lines (one section flatly said "You'll do that? Sarcastically" rather than having the voice speak sarcastically) that were following a poorly written script and designed to take up as much of our time as possible to extend the experience, as there was no actual substance to experience. As a non-puzzle narrative experience, let's also be so honest here--this is all fluff with no depth. The tagline on the brochure summarizing this room is "in the labyrinth of seeking truth, what we ultimately illuminate is the unwavering light of justice within our own hearts." None of this happened. This collection of scenes has nothing to do with justice, heart, or self-discovery. This is not a story about interrogating dark injustice, and didn't need to be, though it did pretend. This incoherent tagline was also on a brochure given out in the lobby at the end, because the game itself wasn't trusted to convey the mystery well. The story element is interesting as a concept, but unfortunately is a shallow and incoherent experience that's desperately trying to convey more complexity, and apparently needed three successive AI-generated post summaries of the adventure (but wrongfully summarized the good ending for us, when we got the bad ending). The mystery is not that complicated and yet felt incredibly convoluted simply due to how poorly it was presented--a postgame summary slide deck and brochure are not a substite for telling a coherent story in experience that claims to be narrative-driven. I am seeing the immersive element of these rooms hailed and simply cannot understand, as our room was so poorly conveyed that there had to be a powerpoint presentation at the end telling us what we had supposedly been immersed in. The lights and room cues are kind of janky but cute, though entirely basic and very cramped. All in all, we had four people and got roadblocked by some genuinely confusing design, and still finished in half the time, because there is just nothing in the room--we basically got one simple puzzle with some flashing lights per person, per $38 entry fee. The front staff were friendly and helpful at least. Unfortuntately, we did come for the escape room portion, and would not return or recommend.
