Phantom Files: The Investigation Of Lockturne Manor

Once again another great room from the Escape Ventures! I’ve heard that this room was their take on Scooby Doo and Ghostbusters, and they were absolutely right! They did all of the common tropes that fans love to see! We had Haley who was absolutely brilliant, and played her role and gave us an incredible intro and outro! Definitely excited for what Escape Ventures have coming up next!

Cutesy spooky room! Puzzles and storyline were unique and interesting. Our GM was wonderful, having worked with us for all 3 rooms we were truly able to vibe by this final one. The movement through the rooms was unique and captivating.

This was our favorite room at this location. It is large and full of high tech puzzles. It has a fun ghostbusters vibe and our GM, Jake, really contributed to that. This is a 90 minute experience but the time flies by because you are having so much fun. Two thumbs up from this team.

Great room, this is the biggest escape room u have attempted, the puzzles were great and challenging.

My favorite escape room at this location, though my two teammates preferred the arcade to this one, and it was a close second for me also. The immersion and set is top notch. The puzzles required some depth and lateral thinking to solve, the acting flowed really well and added significantly to the experience. Definitely a top tier room.

Our family of 5 really enjoyed this room. Haley did an amazing job at getting everyone into the role as Spirit Stalkers. The room itself felt like a mix of Ghost Busters meets Luigi’s Mansion and the puzzles were intuitive and flowed naturally. The room perfectly balances technology, theming, and role playing in a way that The Escape Ventures has seamlessly mastered. We have enjoyed their rooms so much we have made it a mission to complete all of their rooms. My kids, ages 10 and 14 loved this room and can’t wait to do the next one.

So much fun and worth the trip! Not super hard, but fun and challenging and overall an awesome experience.

This room deserves every award it got. The staff was amazing, the story was compelling, spooky, and funny - the puzzles were clever and made logical sense, the ambiance in the room was excellent. We had a great time and can’t wait to come back!

Phantom Files is unreal. Truly wow. No notes. Every single puzzle was incredible, with multiple moments that felt completely new to us or used familiar mechanics in ways we’ve never seen before. The effects in this room are amazing and the lore is on another level. Everything ties together so seamlessly and keeps you fully immersed from start to finish. Jake took this experience and made it 50x better. He is an elite game master and absolutely elevates the room from great to unforgettable. This is hands down the best escape room we’ve ever done. Bring your family, bring your friends, bring everyone. This is a must-do experience. I just wish it was longer so we could have experienced it even more as we flew through in 65 min TEV room ranking so far: 1.) Phantom Files 2.) Operation Treehouse 3.) Neighborhood Watcher 4.) Dragon Challenge: A Hero’s Choice 5.) Bros for Life 6.) Click N’ Glitch 7.) Operation Arctic Storm 8.) Nightfall 9.) Outage That said, rankings aside, there truly are no skips at The Escape Ventures. Every room left us feeling fulfilled and genuinely happy we played, which really speaks to the quality and care put into all of their experiences.

Like all of the best The Escape Ventures games, it is an all around fun game with decent puzzles, amazing set design, and of course really fun interactions with the game master. Phantom Files is probably the most divisive of their games because of how much random stuff it tries. New gameplay, story, and interaction concepts constantly appear all the way to the end. Gameplay mechanics are introduced that feel like they’re going to be repeated but never come back, with other new mechanics that also feel like they could have been repeated replace them. While this means that the gameplay never gets stale, it also means that these ideas don’t fleshed out. The story isn’t as experimental, but it does do a couple interesting things with the haunted house concept, and your game master interactions are all very different from each other (and occasionally kinda inexplicable there’s one moment in this game where I had no idea why it was there). With all the stuff it throws at you this game will never go where you’re expecting the game to go next, and while it’s not perfect, not all of the stuff works, it all adds up to being a unique experience that feels perfect is worth traveling any distance to play. TEV Ranking: 1. Orlando: Cornstalkers 2. Clearwater: Servants of Sleight 3. Clearwater: Pins & Needles 4. Orlando: Arctic Storm 5. Port Charlotte: Phantom FIles 6. Port Charlotte: Click ‘N Glitch 7. Port Charlotte: Nightfall 8. Orlando: Bros for Life 9. Orlando: Neighborhood Watcher (gap in quality) 10. International Drive: Secrets of the Swamp 11. Orlando: Satirical Miracle (gap in quality) 12. Orlando: Outage 13. International Drive: Bunker Busters