Hurricane

6/10 My first experience at Mission X and now that I've done two, will likely not be coming back for another of their rooms unless I have a hardcore group of at least 6 people and maintain notes about all puzzles. This is just not a fun way to do escape rooms for me, so likely will not be back. Hurricane starts out fun, the theme is kind cool and the atmosphere/ambiance is interesting if not a bit distracting sometimes. The puzzles however feel very out of place comparatively. Random boxes house puzzles in the room, lockboxes are abundant (to my recollection) and aside from 1 or 2 clever puzzles/contraptions left me feeling pretty bummed about the room. Being bummed changed to frustration soon thereafter however. After using 3 clues (our self imposed limit) to make our way to what felt like the final puzzle, we find out that we needed some very specific information on puzzles and boxes we had already completed to fill out the answer to the last lock. This was not intuitive at all. If you have a large group where everyone is working on different puzzles I don't know how, without knowing beforehand (and no, being provided a pen and paper doesn't count as warning) how you would recall where each of the specific items, it's passcode, among other information is, let alone consolidate it in the final 5-10 minutes of the room. It's just not a fun gimmick. It's punishing and not satisfying at all to get to that point and feel defeated before you've even timed out on the room.

This was my second room, and I still feel it was a fairly solid experience. The atmosphere was probably better than the puzzles, but there were some fun touches that made it entertaining. I know that it was difficult even with a full group of 8.