The Mafia / Ex Cosa Nostra

Mafia: Deep inside a hidden speakeasy, we had to locate incriminating photos and a pile of cash before the mafia returned. The Alchemist: A secret society and a sacred stone - could we uncover the secrets hidden in this room? Pros: The rooms here were small but nicely decorated to theme. The puzzles were all aligned to the story and flowed with the general game. The gamemasters told us what to do when we were stuck. Cons: There was no real communication system to notify when we needed help. We waved our hands as instructed and verbally asked for help. We asked three times for help before our gamemaster responded. When he did respond, he had no idea where we were in the game and so we had to catch him up to where we were at in the game. The "hint" was actually just what to do next. This happened in both the games we played. We found ourselves stuck on several puzzles mostly because of faulty locks. With an improved communication and hint system this could be a good middle of the road escape room experience.

I am lukewarm here. My group of four (including two novices) had fun, primarily because the theming was strong and escape rooms are inherently fun. In a linear room with fiddly locks, we often had everybody standing around while one person tried several times to enter a code. (This also made it hard to notice when our poor math had gotten us the wrong code.) Relatively few deductions or aha moments, though the end of the room was stronger than the beginning so we went out riding a high.

Great theming, but there was too much handholding with puzzles and a very linear path through the room. Lots of the antique locks were finnicky and needed entire explainer sheets on how to use the hardware, which broke immersion more than if a standard lock had been used.