Vampire's Haven

When we rated this room as a "like" know that it's a very low "like". I don't know what's going on with Axxiom's design philosophy in their latest rooms, but the puzzles have steadily become more and more esoteric. It's not often I do an escape room where I see a puzzle and recieve an item, but I have no idea how they correlate until I finally get a hint. (If I get one, but more on that in a bit.) I do appreciate that Axxiom is thinking out of the box. The box and locks design of their early rooms (High School Mystery, Pharoah's Tomb, Sherlock, Shawshank, etc) are all but completely erased, but in their place is a lot of magnetic item puzzles that end up being "rub the thing on the thing and see if it works" which is starting to dip into "Sierra Adventure game" territory. The second I have to place a wedge of cheese in a weird machine to charge a magic wand, I'm writing this place off forever. The room started off ok. Atmosphere was fun, and fitting. Interactive decorations were fairly obvious. The choice to camoflage the normally atmosphere-shattering hint and timer monitor as a stained glass window is a stroke of absolute genius I've never seen in an any escape room. The issue, was after figuring out a very simple first puzzle, we were granted a few items with absolutely no direction on what they were used for. We realized two were magnetic, and one was just covered in markings with little else to go on. It wasn't until recieving two hints, one that let us know a decoration was interactive without any special items, and the other mentioning how a specific item was used with one of the decorations around the room. I solved the first hint very quickly, but we both had a hard time trying to figure out how the other item worked with its decoration. We had a general idea, but we weren't getting a useful result. The first hint we got was something we already figured out. The second hint we got was ALSO something we already figured out. We sat there for roughly 25 minutes barely recieving any more hints until the puzzle was just opened for us. We also never recieved a hint about any other puzzle while my wife worked on the only puzzle we has a hint for, so I got to stand around being useless while poking at random items with a magnet. The rest of the puzzles we reached weren't as frustrating, but still as esoteric as the rest. The closest was seeing some symbols on an item, and using it on another decoration, but many of those symbols didn't look very similar to the ones of the decoration. When finally collecting all the items needed to open one of the boxes, it did lead to one of the most fun and active puzzles I've done since Fate of the North Pole at Axxiom Newark. Unfortunately it was followed but a lot more puzzles, and one very frustrating physical based one. We did not get out. We noticed just how much puzzles we had left when looking up at the timer and seeing there were only two minutes left. During the "are there any questions" portion of the ending experience I asked for clarification for a few of the puzzles. My main focus was the puzzle we spent over 20 minutes working on, where the game master admitted it was the puzzle that gave people the most trouble. For my opinion as a former game master, that means there's something very wrong with that puzzle. The game master also explained that a specific item was supposed to include the information for one of the other confusing puzzles, but they were scrambled. The game master claimed that they arrange the items to spell the solution since most wouldn't solve it. They were not in order when we came into the room, but they insisted they were, essentially blaming us for mixing them up when we started the game. We did not do that, and they gave me a quiet look like I was lying about this when I insisted we didn't. Do not gaslight me, bro. It's getting harder to recommend Axxiom rooms. While they are definitely improving in atmosphere, they are very quickly losing the plot in their puzzle design, leaning way too much on tech interactivity. I haven't stood around shrugging as much as I have in their latest rooms, when we both usually solve rooms with plenty of time to spare in dozens of other escape room establishments. Whatever happened to placing little lore notes with new puzzle items to at least nudge us in the right direction? Basically proceed with caution, and hope you have a game master that understands how cryptic this room is. No pun intended.

Atmosphere was amazing. Unique room, definitely haven’t seen much in this area like it. Great puzzles, good time

This room is very interactive & has unique game elements that I’ve never seen from other companies. The coolest vampire room I’ve done so far. I would definitely recommend the room. Great for larger groups because you can work on several puzzles at once.