Dark Altar

Omescape has two of our favorite escape rooms, and our least favorite escape room so far. If this was the first one we did, we probably wouldn't have done another. Cheap props, puzzles that were either too easy or way too hard, and a really mediocre atmosphere.

I can’t remember too many of the puzzles, but I just remember the last one being very far fetched that it ruined the fun for me.

This room was just "okay." Atmosphere was a bit eerie, but nothing too spooky. The room felt a little small and could use some TLC though. Puzzles flowed well, but the last one was quite ridiculous.

Dark Altar was a passably fun room with interesting puzzle mechanisms but pales in the immersion and well-engineered flow of other Omescape rooms. It feels as though the atmosphere is a bit dulled down from the potential level of fright and scares implied by its plot. If you have played other, higher-rated Omescape rooms, then you may not be as impressed with Dark Altar.

I’ve done other Omescape rooms and have enjoyed them, but there was almost nothing enjoyable about this room unfortunately. In fact, this is probably one of our least favorite rooms we’ve ever done out of 50+ rooms. Some of the tech didn’t work well, the puzzles nearly all required leaps of logic, and the final puzzle was so frustrating that we had pretty much just stopped having fun. We are experienced escapers – we have never needed as many hints or nudges as we did in this room. The props and set looked fairly old and not in great shape. Laminated cards with info on it take you out of the immersive experience. Overall, a really disappointing experience and not worth what we paid.

I have a soft spot for this room because my bf and I did it with random strangers on a weekday— it’s was one of my earliest rooms and we did really well, and was overall a really special experience— so the negative review make me kinda sad. That being said, in hindsight, I feel like there were some janky puzzles in here and Omescape has many better rooms now. In particular, I think one of the puzzles we spent a while on because it seemed ready to be solved but it extremely was not ready to be solved. I did it so long ago though I don’t really have context or know if they’ve improved it since then.

Kingdom of Cats: Trapped in a kingdom of felines, we were compelled to compete in a tournament to crown the wisest cat in the kingdom. The only way to escape perpetual imprisonment was to compete alongside our feline friends. Dark Altar: We found ourselves trapped inside the Copenheimer Museum where an archaeology obsessed collector had initiated a dark ritual. Our goal was to work our way through the museum to discover and stop the ritual. Joker's Asylum: A maniacal Joker was locked away in an asylum after a tragic incident at the circus. The Joker had escaped. We were tasked with discovering the Joker's secrets and escaping the asylum. Pandemic Zero: A super virus has sickened the city. We must break into the lab and finish work on the cure. Pros: The physical layout of Omescape from the waiting area to the game-play areas is clean, orderly and visually appealing. The puzzles are mostly linear, less about searching and more about thinking critically. Set-design is appealing and clearly tied to the overarching storyline. The games are scaled at different difficulty levels and geared toward different group sizes. Game moderators can be helpful and willing to provide assistance if asked. Cons: The puzzles in their rooms tend to be geometrical or symbol-based. We found the puzzles quite complex in all three games and extremely difficult to solve without assistance from the game masters. Scaling of the puzzles within each individual game could have helped us with the puzzle-solving process. Overall, we find their games overly complex. The friendliness of the game masters and their willingness to offer relevant clues helped prevent frustration and a complete mental melt-down of players.

Least favorite escape room so far. The atmosphere of the room made no clear sense. Some the puzzles were interesting but the last puzzle was ridiculous. It got to the point where our game master had to physically come into the room to help BUT even she couldn't clearly explain how to complete the task. This ate up so much of our time that we barely escaped and took us out of the experience.

A lot of technical issues rose along with being on the right path but not hitting the actual idea for a lot of the puzzles in there. It was pretty frustrating since many of the puzzles didn’t make sense and our game master kept repeating clues that we already knew but reworded it.

My least favorite of the Omescape rooms. I still enjoyed it. Some of the puzzles didn’t make that much sense.