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Reviews

Reviews

Escape From The Haunted Manor

Escape From The Haunted Manor

REAL ESCAPE GAME CROSSING Asakusa

  • Escape room
  • IRL
A carefully curated and well-presented experience! This captured the pressure and excitement of solving puzzles like in Ao Oni. For a 40-minute room, we felt that the puzzles were on the quicker side, primarily to cater to audiences unfamiliar with escape room mechanics and to make the puzzles multi-language accessible. This business has done a great job accommodating English speakers by extensively offering rule videos to explain Japanese context-sensitive situations. I think the minor drawback of having to verbosely explain these concepts were worthwhile. If you're a group, consider booking the whole space, as solo tickets can occupy the room with others. There may be a language barrier if you aren't proficient in Japanese due to that.
Buried Bodies

Buried Bodies

Mystery Manila SM Podium

  • Escape room
  • IRL
The one thing I'm impressed the most out of the games in this branch of Mystery Manila are how they're able to shove so many different rooms in a confined space. Speaking of confined spaces, the room is rife with that. Decorations are charming, and light usage was appreciated. The additional secrets to uncover were very cool too. I would've appreciated puzzles to not be solely progressed by locks; a theme like this would work really well with gizmos, widgets, or cogs. Unfortunately, the room suffers from a high chance of sequence breaking from even just the usual foraging of clues. We largely were able to finish puzzles by reverse engineering them. However, the puzzle contents were admirable and on par with familiar escape room intuit and thinking. Some components are beginning to show some wear, making some parts ending up as non-functional red herrings.
Escape from Seattle - The World's Fair Affair

Escape from Seattle - The World's Fair Affair

Puzzle Break

  • Escape room
  • IRL
In a current generation of widgets and gizmos, the classic fundamentals still got pizzazz. This is especially an enjoyable, lighter stakes room for escape room veterans. Puzzle elements and progression were well-balanced, with good back-and-forth layering. The mechanical reveals were delightful and organic. Even after 10 years, with hands changing between generations and times, the designers still actively consider feedback and tweak game balance, puzzles, and the player experience to not feel obsolete. Clues, while very on-the-nose, all have their clear use case. Distractions and red herrings are minimal. Shout-outs to Mason and Danny for a great time!
Pier of Fear

Pier of Fear

Escaperoom 831

  • Escape room
  • IRL
This was my first time experiencing Escape Room 831’s selection and I was very pleased! The best part of the experience by far is the room theming and immersion. It’s a perfect complement to the Cannery Row exterior with references to the wharf outside. The scares were also well put-together and enjoyably placed throughout the entirety of the room. The audio was excellent; nothing seemed too quiet or off. I felt that the room relied a little too heavily on combination locks. Gameplay flow was hampered often solving puzzles; it was clear when a puzzle was solved, but finding what changed in the room felt stretched. I would appreciate more clear signals, such as audio cues or an activated glowing widget for certain parts indicating a change based on the action the player’s made. I injured myself with one of the physical interactions necessary in this room. While the GMs were incredibly nice to accommodate afterwards, I would’ve preferred the mechanical effect associated with this to be disabled when actually interacting with it.
The Edison Escape Room

The Edison Escape Room

Palace Games

  • Escape room
  • IRL
A well-balanced blend of traditional escape room puzzles and execution-based mechanics make for an enjoyable and challenging room! The structure, puzzle content, and presentation may feel dated by now, but the fundamentals absolutely hold strong. Later physical components had impressive mechanical reuse, though it took a bit to realize how much to re-adapt new mechanics over it. I appreciated how this puzzle was able to adopt to different party sizes. It helped make every player contribute in some fashion, especially in the latter half of the room. It’s very clever in doing so. I do think the reliance on monitors made for a clunkier experience there, as conveying those instructions became heavy-handed or often ignored. Finally, the staff were absolutely wonderful and let us see the internals and technology of the room. Absolutely impressive. Shout-outs to Andrew, the general manager!
Haunting at Haruka High

Haunting at Haruka High

Omescape - Sunnyvale

  • Escape room
  • IRL
Haruka High is one of the most accessibly scary rooms for a group. The theming contains spooks, jumpscares, or other potential horror moments that get your blood pumping, but never over the line. I was impressed with the engineering to make these spooks happen. I was concerned that the theming may have contained triggering content, but was pleasantly surprised to see how considerate they were in not letting those sensitive to trauma be triggered. The setting was incredibly immersive, with props and parts all throughout weaved super well β€” consistent with Omescape’s high quality of props and aesthetics. However, I felt a little off-put when one segment heavily used AI-generated artwork. The puzzles occasionally had clunky activation mechanisms that were exacerbated by steeling oneself into the horror mindset. I found this OK in the end but found our team tunnel visioning a lot more than usual. Some content was obviously cut but remained in the room. I appreciated our GM’s special attention to spooking the scaredy-cats in our group. Shout-outs to Jose!
Robotopia

Robotopia

Omescape - Sunnyvale

  • Escape room
  • IRL

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