Testing Facility

Testing Facility: An Artificial Intelligence machine has developed a mind of its own and is literally out of control. We had to find a way to shut it down before we became its best friends forever. Pros: We played both Testing Facility and Smuggler’s Tunnel in back-to-back games at Escape Chronicles. The game masters were accommodating and helpful in every way. The set design was appropriate to the themes in both rooms and especially impressive in Smuggler’s Tunnel. The puzzles were also aligned to the storyline of the rooms. We especially enjoyed the creativity of the puzzles in Testing Facility. The game flow procceeded smoothly overall thanks to helpful and timely hints from our game masters. Cons: There were a few puzzles in both rooms that were overly convoluted, requiring a few too many steps or logical leaps to solve. In other cases, we found puzzles that we were able to work around in some way that led our game on a different trajectory than the game designers intended. Most of these issues can be fixed with a few minor adjustments. Our advice to the designers/owners is to carefully observe future players and note which puzzles players need hints to solve. Those are the problem areas that need to be fixed in future games. A good game should be perfectly solvable without any hints. We all get stuck sometimes and need a little help. But a puzzle that requires the same hint over and over again reveals a problem in design logic or puzzle execution. Despite the issues mentioned above that caused us to fail to escape on time from Testing Facility, we definitely recommend Escape Chronicles. The creativity of the puzzles, the set design, the helpfulness of the game masters and the enjoyable storylines made for an overall good experience. Bring your friends to Escape Chronicles!

This room was pretty hard. I liked it. Sad to see it go.