Spellbound

Played this game almost six years ago when the company was called "Mindspark", but really glad to see it's still around. Beautiful set design and creepy puzzles. Felt straight out of a storybook. Would love another crack at this one! Highly recommend!

Would not recommend this room or establishment. Axe throwing and noise is ridiculously loud and ruins the immersion and ability to hear small clicks and mechanisms. You hear loud thuds and crashes and people yelling as if they were 3 feet away. Worker didn’t seem too enthralled about being there either. Room theming was solid but lots of gimmicky find random object puzzles and too much back and forth. The axe throwing alone is enough to not recommend this place.

The axe throwing ruined the cool vibe of the room. Really good ambience and cool puzzles ruined by a lack of visibility/nonfunctional lamp and the axe throwing. Also the employees weren't at all enthusiastic about their job.

Spellbound: A coven of witches dedicated to the task of keeping a group of vampires subdued needed our help. We had to slay the vampire before he awoke from his sleep. Terminal: An evil mastermind had launched a secret plot in the subway system of New York City. We had to discover the plan before it was too late. Pros: How many ways can we say AWESOME!? Just when we thought Phoenix couldn't get any better it did! Seriously awesome set design in both Spellbound and Terminal. The storyline for both rooms had us pumped up to play before the game even started. The immersive sets had us truly believing we were in the stories. We especially loved the puzzles in Spellbound that required a different type of thinking than the usual lock-based games. The puzzles in both rooms were all aligned to the theme. The game masters were enthusiastic about their job and about the games. We loved every second at Mindspark! Definitely go check them out. They deserve the escapeologists highest honors with our four top awards.

I agree with what many other reviewers say: 1) The loudness from their axe throwing business certainly takes you out of the atmosphere for this room. The GM even made a comment about that at the beginning before we started the room. So they are aware of the problem, but do not care to fix it. 2) This room is packed with more puzzles than the average room, so you will really be pressing yourself to get out in time. We were able to get out with 2 experienced players, but we only had a couple minutes left at the end and we did use a few hints. I would recommend this room overall for the great puzzles, but I can’t give it a love due to the loud axe throwing that kills the atmosphere.

This room had so much promise, and the theming was great, but the person running it did not enjoy her job and it was often hard to tell what had opened when we did something right or to read what we were staring at. The place is dark (every room) and you only have one small lantern for the whole party. We didn’t finish, and she didn’t even want to show us what we missed (even though we arrived 15 min prior to our time). She didn’t even offer to take our photo. She rushed us out saying the next party was in the lobby (they weren’t). Would not do another room here. A stark difference to the people who ran a Santa room and a Museum Heist room we did earlier in the weekend (who clearly loved both people and their jobs).

My main issue with the room is how loud the ax throwing is next door. There are a lot of subtle clicks that you miss as people are hollering next to you. I think if the atmosphere was better and more immersive, this would have been a “love” room as the puzzles were fun and challenging and the theme was fun. Definitely could be spookier to fit the theme.

If you ignore the noise from axe throwing and crowd it was a great room. Lots of dynamic puzzles that were different! Puzzles were awesome. But it was way too noisy from the axe throwing and crowd to hear things opening after a solve and that wasted most of the time since we didn’t realize something popped open or clicked which made it less immersive. Room was great, just pray if you do go, the axe throwing is limited or they start insulating it more.

Gameplay was good, puzzles were interesting, but we missed when we'd completed some tasks due to how loud the axe throwing was. 😑