Storm Surge

The set design here was out of this world, especially the water feature! These puzzles are unique, and scratched an itch I had been sitting on from a disappointing game at a different company.

Rating: 3.5/5 - Pretty good room, with a nice looking set Pros: ➕Set looked great, very detailed and appropriately weathered and made it feel like a real ship ➕Lots of tech, minimal padlocks ➕Nice variety of puzzles that I liked ➕Flow and difficulty level worked well for us ➕Everything seemed to work ➕Very tactile ➕Multiple areas to explore ➕GM was friendly and helpful Room for improvement: ➖Way too dark, hard to see things, no flashlights allowed ➖Basically no narrative/story in the game beyond what's in the initial description ➖No intro video or audio, the game just starts awkwardly ➖No audio/sound effects which hurt the immersion, especially since you can hear distracting sounds from the other rooms ➖Radios required to communicate with the GM We succeeded as a team of 3 enthusiasts, I would recommend 2-4 players. My ranking of the rooms I've played here so far, starting with my favorite: 1. Mafia Heist 2. Storm Surge 3. Locked-Up Supermax

Nice theming and fun puzzles, but the dim lighting makes it a struggle for middle-aged eyes to see things like the numbers on combination locks. After having that difficulty with another puzzle at this location, we brought a small flashlight to this one, but when we used it, the game master threatened to kick us out of the room, telling us that were electronics were prohibited. We enjoyed the activities, but won't likely return to this location because the darkness makes it too hard for us to work the puzzles. Go for it if you have young eyes, though. :)

This is my second MindTrap experience. The Terpeca recognition is well deserved! The games are well themed and well built! It is definitely a gem in the Chicago suburbs. Storm Surge is a challenging room with lots of varieties of puzzles. It is a great room for emerging enthusiast! Be prepared for the dim atmosphere as it is important to the immersion of the room but also a great part of the challenge. You may be frustrated if you don’t escape but you will not be disappointed in the quality. Soundscape and design are outstanding!

This room has the same high production values as other rooms at Mind Trap. But it might be my least favorite of the ones I've done. I found a lot of the puzzles to be unintuitive, and I definitely feel like they should give you something to write on to prevent wasting time going back and forth. Also, while the theme and production is interesting, it never really felt like we were on a sinking ship because our tasks felt very random, part of it feeling a bit unintuitive

Great room! Not my favorite variation of the ship theme. It was way too dark, and you will have to frustratingly search for things in said darkness without a flashlight. Some inputs were also finicky, which was annoying because we ended up asking for a hint for the final puzzle when we were completely correct. Water features were neat! The puzzles were solid as well, for the most part. We felt smart!

terrific

I wanted to love this room more than I did. The theming and detail is spectacular. They did a great job setting up the room. There were several puzzles that were very finicky where we knew the solution but dialing them in was just not working. We were very discouraged at knowing the solution but wasting so much time trying to get it to work. Still an experience worth doing if you’ve done the other rooms at Mindtrap. It is probably their weakest room but they set the bar so high that it’s still worth seeing.

This is a big one with tons of stuff to do. Quite immersive with some cool special effects/set design. It was definitely a challenge for the 2 of us but we somehow managed to escape.