psarrett

Reviews

Reviews

Marcheurs de rêves [The Dreamwalkers]

Marcheurs de rêves [The Dreamwalkers]

Cabinet Mysteriis

  • Escape room
  • IRL
We enjoyed this room, but I'd say it's an OK game with a really good one struggling to come out. The sets are good but rough-- if you've done Escaparium rooms in Montreal, lower your expectations a couple of pegs. The lighting in the main space was needlessly dim. The game is mostly undermined by some weak signposting and poor feedback. There were steps needed that went either completely unclued or were clued too vaguely. We solved a puzzle correctly, but there's an intentional 10 second delay before anything happens, merely to stymie brute-force attempts. But as players we didn't know that, so we thought we'd gotten it wrong and were frustrated and moved on to other things. There's a puzzle with a tantalizing setup that turned out to have a disappointingly straightforward yet weakly-clued solution. We had items for another puzzle in the right places but not fully socketed, but since there was no feedback we didn't know that. There are no mechanisms for directing the player's attention to what's important (or what's important NOW), relying instead on vocal clues from the GM. If they made a pass through this space to correct these problems, This would be a much stronger and more satisfying game. As it is, it's something of a diamond in the rough.
Le Jour du Jugement [Judgement Day]

Le Jour du Jugement [Judgement Day]

Eliviascape

  • Escape room
  • IRL
Overall we enjoyed this room, even though much of it felt worn. It could use a refresh. The set for act two was confusing-- we weren't sure where we were supposed to be (the narrative didn't match the set), which hurt immersion. The third act was great, and we particularly enjoyed the finale which had a different tone and pace from the rest of the experience. Some areas of the game suffer from poor feedback-- after doing the correct thing, the results of our success happened somewhere else with nothing at our location indicating we'd done the right thing. Since there are lights that can turn on or off at the location of the action, there's no reason they couldn't be used to provide feedback.
Abstraction

Abstraction

Eliviascape

  • Escape room
  • IRL
I liked this room, but with reservations. 1) It was much dimmer than it needed to be, particularly in the first two acts (the third act's lighting, while dim, felt appropriate). For those of us with less than perfect eyesight, the lighting made it difficult to see/read important information, diminishing our enjoyment. 2) The second act is incongruous in context of the game. When explained afterward it made sense, but it did not make sense while we were playing. We actually groaned when we walked in, because it was a thematic change we weren't expecting and felt arbitrary. It feels like there's a story beat missing before the transition, where players could get a clear narrative confirmation about what's going on (in case they haven't figured it out) which would enhance the second act by giving players the proper context to engage with it. Even so, the second act feels like it belongs in an entirely different game. We were given walkie talkies as a way to get hints, and we hated it. It was an object someone had to carry and track and was completely unthematic. GMs are already watching us on camera, presumably they can also hear us, they should be able to communicate with us through speakers or some other system in the room without walkie-talkies. 3) There's a neat gameplay mechanic in the third act that we enjoyed, but the end of the game came without warning or narrative setup. We solved a puzzle, and stepped through a door expecting to enter a new game space, but instead... it was the lobby hallway and the game was over. It was sudden and anticlimactic. The game is missing a narrative beat here that wraps things up.
Le Château du Supplice Éternel [The Castle of Eternal Suffering]

Le Château du Supplice Éternel [The Castle of Eternal Suffering]

Sauve Qui Peut - Saint-Jean

  • Escape room
  • IRL
Really terrific room with no locks. This room also featured my absolute favorite moment from any escape room, and to say anything about it would spoil it. The ambitious sets make good use of lighting effects and video screens. The puzzles are fair and tactile. There's a physical portion that I wish had a puzzle layer on top of it, but was nevertheless a fun and memorable change of pace. The hour we drove to get here from Montreal was absolutely worth it. Heartily recommended.
Magnifico

Magnifico

Escaparium - Laval

  • Escape room
  • IRL
All the raves about Magnifico set my expectations too high in the wrong places, so I'd like to calibrate your expectations. This *is* an excellent room, and a successful union of escape room with immersive theater. Critically, players are not asked to roleplay-- you are simply people who want to see a show at the circus, and your interactions with the characters stem from that foundation. This makes it easy to talk to the characters and become part of the story. While you'll see actors throughout the game, both interacting with them directly and witnessing conversations between them, they're never present while you're working on puzzles (although they often set them up). There are plenty of high-quality puzzles in the experience that are fun and satisfying to solve, and they're well-integrated with the story. The sets are detailed, evocative, and intimate. None have the WOW factor of many of Laval's other rooms like Forgotten Cathedral (and while the final space is large, it's not a "wow!"), but each had been created with love and evoke a sense of place. Magnifico is a 2.5 hour experience that didn't feel like one-- time flew by. How much you appreciate it will depend very much on why you play escape rooms. If you're there for the puzzles, you'll be satisfied but probably not blown away. Ditto for the sets. If you're there for the story, you may enjoy this room more. The story is handled very well, coming to you in bits and pieces organically. It's treated as theater, and in fact one poignant moment near the end will be delivered to only one person in your group. Looking at what they've accomplished-- how deftly they merged theater with puzzles-- it's impossible not to admire it. But for me, this wasn't the best escape room in the world. It wasn't even the best escape room at Escaparium. But it was still absolutely worth doing. Just lower your expectations from "mind-blowing" to "really good."
Le Plan [Escape Plan]

Le Plan [Escape Plan]

Escaparium - Montreal

  • Escape room
  • IRL
This is not an escape room. Marketing it as such is deceitful. This is participatory theater. You become characters in a story, acting out the roles that are fed to you by the other actors. There are almost no real puzzles to speak of. You're asked to devise an escape plan, but you're limited because you don't know all the rules of the in-game world, so the actors must feed them to you. And while there are multiple ways you could approach certain situations, they're limited and it all feels scripted, and you have to follow the script. It never felt like we had true agency. If you like participatory theater, performing on demand, improv, etc., this might appeal to you. If you enjoy escape rooms for the challenge of solving puzzles, it will probably not. Honestly, I feel cheated by a bait-and-switch.
La Cathédrale Oubliée [The Forgotten Cathedral]

La Cathédrale Oubliée [The Forgotten Cathedral]

Escaparium - Laval

  • Escape room
  • IRL
This room was outstanding. Stellar set design, build quality, and visual effects. Solid puzzles.. Even the somewhat standard "figure out which buttons to hold down" trope was done in a very cool and creative way that elevates the experience. The puzzles were integrated very well into the storyline and environment. Even accounting for recency bias, this was one of my very top escape room experiences. The production level is astounding and sets a very high bar. My only quibble is with the opening briefing, which takes place in a hallway adjoining (in the open office sense) a fabrication shop where people were working. And while they dressed the hallway to make it thematic, it still felt very work-in-progress and prototype-like, which was a huge contrast with the rest of the game.
Ctrl Alt Reboot

Ctrl Alt Reboot

Escaparium - Laval

  • Escape room
  • IRL
I'm giving this room a thumbs-up because objectively, it's a great room. The puzzles are good and often creative, the actors' performances were terrific, and the ending was unique. But subjectively, it left me cold. As with many sci-fi rooms, spare hard surfaces are the visual design language for "futuristic", resulting in rooms that feel generic and are uncomfortable to occupy. A key mechanic in the room involves carrying around a cumbersome piece of gear that was a pain to manage and use. The finale was unique, but more of an action set piece than an escape room and not to my taste.
Armoire à Vendre [Wardrobe for Sale]

Armoire à Vendre [Wardrobe for Sale]

Escaparium - Laval

  • Escape room
  • IRL
1) The set design and build quality are amazing. When the lights come up and the space is revealed, I couldn't help but smile. The details, lighting, and sound design all combine to create a magical place that feels real, The puzzles were varied and thematic, and the in-room character was fun to interact with. 2) Our GM was way too aggressive in providing hints. Often we'd barely processed what a puzzle was asking of us before the GM piped in to hand us the key insight. At one point while manipulating a puzzle and talking through it with each othr, after someone said something to the effect of "this goes here", the GM said "Are you sure?" We neither wanted not asked for her advice, and this kind of thing happened throughout the game, often robbing us of an "aha!" moment. It undermined the entire reason for doing escape rooms in the first place, and really frustrated us. 3) The latter part of the game involved multiple occasions where we had to hide and watch actors slowly play out the storyline. Perhaps some people enjoy this, but I come to escape rooms to be the active agent, not a passive observer. I'd have preferred a tightened script that minimized these captive vignettes and left the focus on us as players, rather than actors playing out the telegraphed narrative arc.
Projet R.E.S.E.T. [Project R.E.S.E.T.]

Projet R.E.S.E.T. [Project R.E.S.E.T.]

Immersia Escape Games

  • Escape room
  • IRL
From a tech, set design and execution standpoint, the room was great. But the theme itself was an abstract excuse to have us do arbitrary tasks. We were ostensibly being monitored to see if we, as people who committed crimes in the metaverse, could be readmitted to society, but almost none of the tasks put in front of us were thematically linked to that storyline. Consequently I didn't think the room delivered on its promise. The gimmick where if you make a mistake you have to start over might sound good on paper, but in practice it's not fun to repeat tasks you've already finished, and it just felt like a time killer. Is it slick and polished? Yes, absolutely. But the in-game experience and the theme do not serve each other, and as a result it all feels a little sterile and generic.
Le Grand Immersia Hotel [The Grand Immersia Hotel]

Le Grand Immersia Hotel [The Grand Immersia Hotel]

Immersia Escape Games

  • Escape room
  • IRL
The plot device to get us, as players, into the game felt contrived and nonsensical, and I didn't like the cold open at all. The motivation for the whole thing was very poorly established. Once inside, the live actor didn't seem to serve any in-game purpose other than to create tension by artificially pausing our momentum and forcing us to hide. The room would have held up just fine without that. The room itself was solid, with some nice reveals and puzzles that fit the theme. I especially enjoyed the in-game clock and the unique way we stopped it.
L'affaire St-Onge [The St-Onge Case: Weekend at the Shack 2]

L'affaire St-Onge [The St-Onge Case: Weekend at the Shack 2]

Immersia Escape Games

  • Escape room
  • IRL
We did not do Weekend at the Shack, so we came into the story without any foreknowledge. A story catchup is baked into one of the first puzzles, which I thought was a smart piece of game design. The idea that a police warehouse was built atop a killer's murder shack for the past 10 years is ludicrous, but serves to allow you to transition between environments so you just have to go with it. The set design of the shack is terrific. We've played a few rooms with similar tropes, and this was probably the creepiest. I didn't love the puzzles in the second floor of the shack-- I found the rationale for them vague and confusing, and each was finicky to solve. At the climax of the game, the killer tells you exactly what to do. He basically says "I'm going to do A ,when I do, you do B, get C, and put it at D." That was extremely disappointing and un-fun. It was like the game was just exhausted at that point and wanted to be done. The game started strong, but finished weak.
Servants of Sleight

Servants of Sleight

The Escape Ventures - Clearwater [prev. The Exit Games]

  • Escape room
  • IRL
The theming of each area was terrific-- they all felt like the places they were trying to emulate. A nice combination of physical manipulations and mental challenges. I was a little disappointed with the magic shop area, which felt like it had a lot of great potential that was unrealized and a lot of intriguing decor that was just that, decor. The opening space was great, and the "secret" space was also satisfying. I liked that within each space the gameplay was non-linear, allowing for teams to figuring things out on their own in their own order.
Pins & Needles Tattoo Parlor

Pins & Needles Tattoo Parlor

The Escape Ventures - Clearwater [prev. The Exit Games]

  • Escape room
  • IRL
This was a fantastic room, although calling it a "room" does it a disservice. Other venues would have fit 2-3 different escape rooms into the footprint of this one experience. They put a lot of thought into all aspects of this game-- narrative, decor, pre-game, props, audio, etc. Our gamemaster was terrific-- really sold the story and vibe through the pre-game and late game. The game itself had a mechanism I haven't seen before in other escape rooms, which was delightful. There is one area that is completely bottlenecked by something that could use stronger signposting-- there's so much to look at in the room, it was easy to overlook the one important thing that you need to get started. Otherwise the game was fantastic, with strong theming and narrative. Normally I'm sensitive to rooms that use a lot of locks, but I didn't mind them at all here because for the most part they were well-integrated into the setting. Well worth the drive from Orlando.
Operation Arctic Storm: The Final Meltdown

Operation Arctic Storm: The Final Meltdown

The Escape Ventures - Orlando Waterford Lakes

  • Escape room
  • IRL
This was a solid room, even though it is completely lock-driven-- virtually every puzzle yielded a word for a wordlock, a numeric lock combo, or a physical key. The puzzles themselves were nicely varied, well-themed to the environment, and plentiful. The game takes you through quite a few spaces, and while the set dressing is rather spartan, it works within the arctic research station setting. I'll note that the slide-- which you're told about before you start-- is NOT slippery at all and really not possible to "slide" down-- use the provided rope instead. Our team of three enjoyed it, finishing with no hints with almost 25 minutes to spare (out of 90).
Classified: Operation Nine Lives

Classified: Operation Nine Lives

Escape Artist Greenville - Downtown

  • Escape room
  • IRL
We enjoyed this room. The first act was unique in our experience and lasted JUST long enough-- any more would have overstayed its welcome. While we appreciated that act (especially its finale), I think we enjoyed the rest of the puzzles in that space even more. Some really nice teamwork puzzles, and the theme was amusing. On the critical side, the room's setup made no sense (we're newly-minted secret agents sent in to... poison an old lady at dinner in her apartment? What?). A very simple change in the finale interface (changing buttons from press-and-hold to toggle) would have made it much easier for us to determine the correct course of action. And the whole Escape Artist building, including this room, just felt icky to be in.
Wrecked

Wrecked

Masterpiece Escapes

  • Escape room
  • IRL
We really enjoyed this room. The audio and visual effects created a great atmosphere, and the set design delivered on the junkyard theme. There were a lot of locks, but in this room they made complete sense-- of course an iron fence, an office shed, or even an outdoor garbage can in a junkyard would be locked. In this room the locks reinforced the fantasy. But beyond that, the puzzles were creative, thematic, and fun. There was a cooperative puzzle I particularly enjoyed. The finale doubled down on the theme in a cool way. Don't be put off by the "investigating a serial killer" theme-- there's a moment that's a little creepy but nothing truly scary. This was a great room our group of 3 thoroughly enjoyed. I do wish the narrative could have been integrated more tightly into the gameplay. Our host gave us a big info dump after we finished to explain what was going on narratively, and we would have loved those beats to have been delivered by the room itself rather than merely alluded to.
Loading...