And here we have the final room of our marathon session at 13th Gate, The Asylum.
This was quite the solid room. It's one of their older games for sure and it used a common escape room theme, but still a wonderful experience. As I have said, in all my reviews, 13th gate is known for their amazing sets. Impressively, they built an elaborate abandoned mental health asylum, one that had rooms and rooms and rooms. The spooky factor was out in full force!
The medical themed puzzles flowed nicely and just about everything made logical sense. There were a few gross out things (heh, toilet), but all in all, we really felt the "We really need to escape!" sense with this room. The storyline was straightforward with a nice twist at the end which worked.
13th Gate uses an "automated" hint system that they bake into most of their rooms. Someone, (like a cat in Spellbound or another victim in The Collector), gives you a pre-recorded clue when you need help. In this game, it was a little girl who was locked up in another part of the Asylum. The effect works surprisingly well and the gamemaster stays on top of things to jump in if the automated response isn't helpful. however, any time that we needed a clue, we had to go back all the way to the first rooms that we could hear her.
The main issue I had with this game was the same I have with any game at 13th Gate. These are 60 minute rooms that really need to be 75 minute rooms. There's a LOT of puzzling to be done. We were a group of 4 and we ran over and they let us keep going. (And yes, if youβve been following these reviews, youβll notice that I have said this again and again. We didn't make it out of any of the six rooms that we did on time and for five of them, we got out because they let us play beyond the allotted 60 minutes.)
Come to 13th Gate for pretty much any of the games here. Put Cutthroat, Anubis and Flight 13 as your must-dos. This company is worth the 90 minute drive from New Orleans. If you are coming out, just plan to spend the whole day there & do all of their games.

Particularly interesting or different
Yes
Somewhere between spooky and scary
Physically active
Somewhat