Black Dragon

As a huge fan of the movie Bloodsport when I was in high school, I couldn’t wait to try an escape room themed around Kowloon walled city. Right off the bat, I can tell that Escape Room LA is really, really good at theming. From the first room to the alley, the details were amazing. What they also do really differently here is instead of cameras and the “voice of God,” your GM is actually in your room with you, acting as a character. I think it’s definitely an interesting spin on things. We ended up not interacting too much with him since we only needed one hint, which actually turned out to be that we solved it correctly, but just had an alignment issue. The room starts with a very cool and unique intro, that’s perfectly themed to its setting. It’s not a knock your socks moment, but it did make me smile. Once you open the alleyway there are tons of non-linear puzzles to do, though as you near the end, things get a bit more linear. I think the sweet spot for this room is about 3-4 people. In terms of the puzzles, I think everything made sense for the most part, and had a range of high tech to combo locks. There is some use of Chinese language involved, but be aware that you don’t need to speak it, and that the puzzles are designed for non-speakers, so don’t overthink things. My main knock against this room is that some of the mechanisms are very finicky. I’m not a fan of where you can “fail” a puzzle if a rectangle is flipped the wrong way, and there are a couple of those types of puzzles at play here. Overall though, my son and I, and the meetup group we were with, had a great time and managed to escape with around 9 minutes to spare with no real hints used! Definitely recommend this escape room.

Another really well designed room. Puzzles were a little better than Atlantis and set design was just as immersive. I will say there is a lot to do, and there is a lot to overlook. GM being with us was not as akward I will say, there was a level of immersion with the GM to be in the room with us.

How fun was this! Thanks so much!

This was a nice room. Lots of themed decor and very different room types. I went with a group of 3 and it was tough. The puzzles make sense for the most part but there’s just a lot to do. I think it’s doable with 3 people but you have to be good about filling in others about what you’re seeing/finding. A lot of the times we were in different rooms doing our own thing and it took time to figure out the current situation when we got the opened room that someone else was already working on. There were lots of unique puzzles and they made good use of the space. I’d recommend it to people looking for a medium difficulty. It’s probably easier if there’s more people.

Could’ve been an all timer but some things made this a good but not great room. Our starting point was unclear and we wasted some time in the pre-room when we thought it was still the pregame briefing. The actor is annoying and totally unecessary. More a flaw of the system than the GM himself. This system is just worse than the normal camera system. Best done with 4-6 people. We did with three and was a bit challenging to finish on time with the amount of time we wasted in the preroom. 7/10, but could’ve been 9.5/10 with some easy fixes.

Overall, I have mixed feelings about this game. A lot of the puzzles were not reset correctly and so it caused a lot of confusion. Plus, two of the puzzles were broken and so it caused even more confusion. One of my biggest pet peeves with an escape room though is when someone says “most people need a hint with this puzzle” which basically means the logic of the puzzle is too messy for people to piece together. If that’s the case, revisit the puzzle and make changes. I’m glad I did the room, but four people minimum is needed. Also, the room is VERY busy and a lot of unnecessary features.

I really enjoyed this room, right from the beginning when you have a rather unique interactive introduction, all the way through the large number of well-constructed puzzles. The set design is also excellent. Highly recommended.

I played my first escape room here back in 2016 so I thought it would be full circle to play my 50th escape room here. I was in the promo video for Black Dragon last year so I came back with two friends to finally play the room. Our game master was nice but seemed inexperienced. We explained that we wanted to be paced and to escape so if she saw us struggling, she could give us clues. We got stuck after the first room and I was in one room waving my hands and asking for a clue and we never got any help. Only when we were down to three minutes did she come around and try to give us a clue but it was too late. We were two puzzles away from finishing when time ran out. It was really disappointing. So I’ll say the experience was subpar but the set and puzzles were done well. Step into 1960’s Hong Kong and stop the black triad gang from taking over the city. When you enter the first restaurant, you start by eating real fortune cookies and piecing together clues from inside them. The set is massive so a large group will help divide and conquer. There are a wide variety of puzzles that involve staying on your toes (literally). Keep your eyes peeled and read wisely.