Bank Heist

Played this right after Cabin in the Woods probably didn't help, but this is definitely one of my least favorite escape rooms I've ever played. This is not to speak lowly on Escape Room Cleveland or even the room itself by any means, both the room and the company are well made and enjoyable! It's just that in an industry where I feel everybody makes a great experience, mediocrity isn't going to get you very far, and Bank Heist simply felt like a mediocre room. The design was fine, although the second room of the game felt very underwhelming and dare I say borderline pointless. None of the puzzles were exceptionally impressive, interesting, or difficult either. My one friend and I who have done a handful of escape rooms together got out with some albeit minimal difficulty.

This was a very good room and a huge step up from the one it replaced. I did feel like more could have been done with the later later stages of the room but ultimately it was still a great experience!

Puzzle Quality: 7.5/20 Looks/Theme: 6/15 GameMaster Rating: 5/10 Operation Fluidity: 3.5/5 Combined Rating: 22/50 Overall Difficulty: 3/10 Quick Notes: - Multiple rooms, medium in size - A couple puzzles were just not good CATEGORIES EXPLAINED IN MORE DETAIL BELOW: Puzzle Quality - How intuitive, logical, and unique the puzzles were. How well do the puzzles fit the theme?) Looks/Theme (How much effort, time, and money went into making an immersive and unique atmosphere GameMaster Rating - How attentive and helpful was the game master? Were the hints given in a timely manner and were they quality hints that helped but did not give you the solution too directly? Operation Fluidity - Was the game reset properly? Was it clean inside the room? Were the code entry and solution methods working properly? such as electronic responses when correct codes entered? Overall Difficulty - This is fairly subjective but is mostly correlated to how many total puzzles and how time consuming they each are compared against the 60 minute time limit that almost all rooms have. Combined Rating - Simply a total tally out of 50 of the four main categories. (Puzzle Quality and Looks/Theme are weighted a little more because they are the most important parts of having a good experience). The higher the number, the better the room! Just remember that a 5/10 or 7.5/15 or a 25/50 combined rating is an AVERAGE rating (for some reason in most people’s heads, a 5/10 is a below average or bad rating). So if a room has a combined rating of above 25, then it is a quality room and a good experience that I would recommend! It has to be a really well done room to score above a 35.

People are nice and the theming is fine. We’ve done many rooms with this company and they’re always solidly okay, though we usually have at least one prop malfunction and their hint system isn’t great. Overall a good enough experience that we keep going back.