Insane Asylum

Wild West: Locked up in the local jail, we had to make our escape before the sheriff returned. Asylum: The inmates are running the asylum and our goal was to get out fast. Perfect Crime: Like the board game Clue only better. Who done it? When? With what weapon? Where? We had to figure it all out. PanIQ San Jose is a welcome addition to the San Jose escape room scene. They had only been open a week when we played all three of their rooms. We are happy to report that the experience was top-notch from start to finish. The waiting room was neat and tidy. All of the gamemasters were efficient and friendly. We started our day in the Wild West room and were immediately impressed with the quality of the set design. This room and the other two rooms were perfectly decorated to theme. The sturdy construction made for a great user experience. There was enough searching to make the game fun, but not so many props and so much furniture to prove overly distracting. The game play proceeded smoothly in a simple linear fashion. We did not easily escape, but the puzzles were logical and relatively straight-forward. We completed each game with ten minutes or less to spare and struggled a bit as a result of our own mistakes. The game master helped guide us with hints to keep our game perfectly on pace. We really enjoyed the mix of mechanical, kinesthetic, logic, deductive reasoning and symbol puzzles. Honestly we loved PanIQ room and will highly recommend it to all of our friends. We have played so many poor or middle of the road escape rooms lately that we were pleasantly surprised by our overall awesome experience at PanIQ room. Go play here!

I didn't like that the room had some red herrings.

I wasn’t a fan of this room. There are puzzles that simply don’t make sense. Two of our members spent 30 minutes on a single maze/coordination puzzle — they were beyond frustrated. The room is creepy, especially the beginning.