The Other Side

Very good set design. The room is clearly an homage to a TV show but they do not want to come out and say which one. You’ll figure it out. Our GM was very enthusiastic and friendly. This place has everything it needs to be successful… … but unfortunately “The Other Side” has the same problem as the other two rooms we played at Fox in a Box: flat-out broken technology. I am not sure I have ever had to ask for so many hints in one room where the answer was “do the thing you’re already trying to do, but keep futzing with it and maybe it will work.” This is a problem that I thought we were past in the industry but these folks are determined to prove me wrong. In addition to the straight-up broken puzzles there was at least one instance of a ghost puzzle but in a way I have never seen before: the prop fully works and reveals information … that just never gets used. We’re not talking “stray blacklight message that wasn’t fully painted over,” this is a big honking (cool-looking) prop that you have to activate to get it to show you the ghost puzzle. Why leave that in the room? It’s like instead of doing maintenance, they are cutting content out of the room as the mechanisms stop fully functioning. We even got a key that didn’t unlock anything, which they claimed was a red herring. What would even be the point of that? It’s a key! Just leave it out of the room if you don’t use the lock any more. I just cannot recommend Fox in a Box Miami in good conscience. Maybe these rooms all worked perfectly when they were built, but we played three rooms and each one had significant tech failures. That’s not bad luck, that’s neglect.

The idea was great, but the execution wasn’t very good. The rooms was much more expensive than most escape rooms, and there really wasn’t a lot to account for that cost. The design is spooky but cheap with some things made of paper maché. I could get over that, but the tech was also finicky and the puzzles weren’t very logical. Overall, their rooms could use a little more thought into gameplay and what can reasonably be deduced by players. With this and all their rooms, there was usually a lot of time wasted because something wasn’t placed EXACTLY in the right place to the millimeter or because the solution to a puzzle wasn’t something a player could infer from things in the room. Overall I give it a 3/10, maybe 4/10 just because of atmosphere.

Daniel got into character , which was great :) The decor was fitting . The puzzles were enjoyable. Out of the 2 rooms Ive done with this company, this was my favorite. Out of all the rooms from this company, my boyfriend’s favorite is The Other Side.