Shipwrecked

Fun, creative room. I like history and maritime themes so this room was a treat. Trapped does some really interesting puzzles that I like a lot, but that includes some puzzles that have awkward failure cases. We needed the GM to come in at one point to reset a puzzle that had become unsolvable. It wasn’t the end of the world but it was immersion breaking. There was also a puzzle with a misleading clue that we gave some feedback on, and hopefully Trapped will address it. One other ding is how many similar locks are in the room. At one point there were 3 or 4 locks in play that we had to run each code through because there was no indication which lock the code was for - that design pitfall should be avoided. Otherwise, we enjoyed the room, and I consider it an above average experience, mostly for the seamless tie-in with the historical elements. If you’re not into history, this may be more of a middle tier experience for you.

This evening, Trapped Escape Game was the next stop on our tour of all the escape rooms in the pigeon forge/gatlinburg area. To start, games are not labeled as private though you can pay to make it so but that adds up quick. We booked around half an hour before our game start time and arrived maybe 20 minutes prior. We were warmly greeted by our gamemaster who took us back right away to start the game (Shipwrecked). Story wise, there was a general goal but not a specific directive as to how to escape the room (ie: find certain coordinates or an object, etc). However the props and general appearance of the room did make us feel like we were on a ship. The puzzles made us think, which was great, as we love to use escape rooms to challenge our brains. Gameplay was a little underwhelming compared to some of the other games in the area. Locks were your basic find a combination and plug them in type of locks and a couple of key based locks. There’s one puzzle that is cool in concept but if done incorrectly the first time, you cannot go back and fix it or change your approach. We had to be given the answer to continue. Still a solid experience, especially for those new to escape games. For those who have played many, may be a bit lackluster.