The Lost Expedition

Fun room with a unique spin. The puzzles are good, the atmosphere is good, the ending is great. My favorite at this location.

Most of the reviews already cover the main points of this room. It's an adventure type escape room where everyone has a different assigned role, and there is the really novel concept of having a certain amount of Fuel instead of a traditional timer. The more things you keep on (mainly lights), the faster you burn fuel and the less time you'll have to finish the escape. We had 30% fuel remaining when we finished (and had been inside for 58 minutes supposedly). Depending on your fuel usage, your game experience can be anywhere between 10-90 minutes. Note that our group was super conservative with fuel, to the point it was slightly detrimental. Word to the wise, this room is REALLY REALLY DIM/DARK if you don't turn on more lights. And this room requires noticing a lot of DETAILS. So take those things into consideration. There are a decent amount of things to do, and they are of a good variety. Note that different roles have different tasks and are given different tools, but after the initial split-start (surprise!), anyone can help out anyone else and roles can be more fluid. I was the geologist, and I certainly could have done better. The geologist definitely has to do the most thinking and a lot of communicating for the team to complete core parts of the game. That's a good note to have when assigning roles among yourselves at the start. Other roles have more straightforward responsibilities. But once again, anyone is free to help another out and you should work together anyways. This was a very fun game. We played with 4 people. It can go up to 8, but I think 4 was a solid number due to the size of the physical space. Overall, it's a medium difficulty but there are parts that are definitely tricky and I could see teams losing valuable time/fuel being stuck on them. Just like Missing Season, it's not really a combo lock room. A lot of the puzzles are physical puzzles or built into the set. The set is themed well, but not the most impressive visually haha.

Our GM was enthusiastic to show off the room. I love the idea of introducing roles for players, and I think there’s room for more usage of the roles. This room is best with 4-6. It’s not super techy or immersive, but it doesn’t need to be. The puzzles were intuitive, creative, nonlinear, and required communication between players. The timing aspect of the room is really cool and interesting. The room is a lot of fun, and they offer difficulty adjustments. We enjoyed ourselves a lot.

If you bring kids make sure to have one adult with each kid We finished our room with “time” to spare, but I felt a lot of insecurity about if we were going down the right paths of figuring out.. like we wasted a lot of time trying to do a puzzle and it was on the wrong …. …. and that didn’t need to happen, also, low light. I liked it in general though, despite the low light. We all had fun and there were many innovative aspects. I loved the neighbor more. Seemed like the puzzles were not quite clear I guess, in some cases The lobby has a puzzle!

A good room for teamwork. We liked this room a lot but preferred The Neighbor at Steal and Escape a bit more. An innovative way to control the time countdown.

This was a fun room with great props. The "timer" was unusual - a fuel tank where your time for escape is based on how much fuel you consume / are left with. We had 20% tank upon completion. This was my 60th room (54W-6L) that I played with three other adults with similar statistics. It is a role-based game, but you can swap and share roles so don't be too worried about which role you are assigned.

Fun and interesting game, though I do feel like it was probably more impressive in its earlier days. We escaped somewhere around 40 minutes. Perhaps a smaller group than our 8 would’ve been more appropriate.

This room is outstanding. I’ve done at least 50 rooms in the U.S. alone and was impressed with every aspect. I’m surprised at some (scant) reviews that it was “old school” or not impressive. There were only 2 of us but it is designed for 4 or 8. I can see how it would be overwhelming for novice or intermediate players… The first employee we spoke with when we were waiting basically said NO WAY are you getting out and it was stupid to book for 2 (she was nice about it). It is non-linear with a variety of puzzle types. The story is cool as was interaction with game master. The “timer” is also unique and something I’ve never seen. In short… Do this room. If there are 2 of you and you are experienced, you can do it. We live in Oceanside and drove 45 mins to play it. Excited to do the Neighbor game next.

I like how this is not your typical lock-and-key place. Theming was very well done and I haven’t come across another room like that. Puzzles were challenging but not impossible or frustrating. Definitely a must-do!