The Mad Scientist [prev. The Laboratory]

I have a real soft spot for this game, and proof that some older lock and key rooms are keepers. Minimal design and just an onslaught of really fun, cleverly designed smaller-scale puzzles, representing a wide range of puzzle types, with a fun overall conceit for establishing the puzzle sequences.

Mad puzzle rush! There's enough time built into this room that you can work with your team on just 2 tracks at a time. We were ambitious and we started 4 at the same time, so we finished much earlier than intended. I would say you can definitely complete this with 4! But open to more as you can split up the puzzles.

This game is really interesting because it is a straight up puzzle fest. There is a board in the game, detailing what puzzles you can work on in each path. The amount of puzzles you get also depends on how well you’re doing. As a group of 3, we were starting off strong and were cocky, so, got all puzzles, and…IT IS A LOT. There a few puzzles I didn’t love, and some I really did, some very unique ones. If you’re here doing Treasure island, and you’re all about puzzles, this is your game to play! If you car about set, and story though, maybe look to ghost stories.

This was such a fun room and the hype lived up to my expectations. We were told that this was a puzzle-centric room and it was! We had a group of seven and we all had something to do the entire time. My highlights for this room were the diversity of puzzles and there was a uniqueness in the execution for select puzzles. I also appreciated the track visual so you could see which puzzles were dependent on each other. I could imagine that without the track visual, folks could split up and get too confused if they are not communicating correctly. Finally, I believe that they adjusted the number of puzzles and that is very much appreciated! Highly recommend this room for puzzle lovers

The Mad Scientist is a delightfully mechanical room, with relatively few high tech effects. Overall the game has multiple parallel linear puzzles tracks, which all must be solved to get to the final puzzles. The number of tracks set up by default depends on the number of players, but since the game doesn’t require a ton of intricate set up, the game master was actually able to provide new tracks for us to do when it was clear we were moving ahead of expected pace. Our game master kept a good eye on things and only stepped in when things went really awry for us.

Puzzle heavy room are the best. 9/10

Super unique game! I love that the game is catered to the group, it made for a perfect challenge!

This was a fun first escape room experience for my parents! The puzzles were pretty straightforward and varied in difficulty, which was good for the variety in experience for our group. My family had a great time!

This was a very puzzle heavy laboratory game. Some very fun puzzles, and others I found a bit frustrating. Overall, a nice room with plenty for a group of 4-5 to do.