497 escape rooms
I’ve enjoyed rooms at this venue in the past, but hadn’t been since before the pandemic. This is supposedly a reasonably new room. I say “supposedly” because the props and set are in rough shape. We speculated that maybe the pirate theme attracts a lot of kids’ parties, because this room seems to have had a hard life. One major transition was broken to the point where the door won’t even close and the GM just had to say “don’t go or look in here until I tell you.” Several of the combination locks were very difficult to manipulate due to wear and tear. Other props had obvious visible damage. As far as the puzzles, the game is linear and there wasn’t anything terribly innovative or special, but it was… fine? I’d give this a thumbs-up just because there’s nothing especially bad about it — ten or even five years ago it would probably have been a room I liked a lot, simply because there are a lot of puzzles. But the state of disrepair is really inexcusable when you are charging full price and for that reason I have to give it a thumbs down. Call before you book and see if they’ve fixed the broken door, is all I’m saying.
It was… fine? There are a bunch of locks and you will open them all. Nothing terribly innovative and not much connection to any kind of plot or story, but if you want to play an escape room, you could probably do worse. This is firmly in the “unexceptional but largely inoffensive” category.
It looks sufficiently like the interior of a pirate ship and apart from, you know, all the combination locks it was immersive enough. (There were also a few older key padlocks, one of which is pretty cool.) One big map has a number of typos. These are apparently not intended to be clueful. But, I guess pirates were not known for their excellent spelling.
No
You’re trapped on a ghostly pirate ship that for some reason is full of puzzles. You have an hour to escape. You will never meet the ghosts or find out why they trapped you, why their pirate ship was full of puzzles, or indeed anything else.
Easy
There are a respectable number of puzzles (the game is linear, so having more than 2-3 people may not be a great experience in terms of everybody being fully engaged, but in terms of the raw number of things to do, there’s no shortage).
Mechanical
Locks, locks, and more locks. One “close the circuit by putting objects with magnets in the right place” puzzle (solved by brute force because we never found anything cluing an intended solve path) and more use of a UV flashlight than I would have expected in a game that supposedly debuted in 2022. Quite possibly the strangest usage of a sword (not in context, but what it triggers) I’ve ever seen.
3
Not scary
There are a couple of plastic skeletons and one attempt at a mechanical jump scare.
8
Yes
One of the major transitions (opening the second major area of the game) was broken. The GM apologized and basically said “don’t go through this door until I tell you it’s open.” That’s not the end of the world, but combined with an overall level of disrepair (damaged scenery, several locks that barely work) it is pretty disappointing for a game that isn’t that old.
No
Not at all
Mostly accessible. The play spaces aren’t that large to begin with, so navigating a wheelchair around a lot would be tricky, but for the most part if you just positioned yourself in the middle, you’d be able to see and hear most things. The game is linear, so there’s only one active puzzle most of the time.
Yes
Easy
Sep 27, 2023 | Experienced Sep 27, 2023