The Courtyard

Starting with this room and completing it on the first try means we canonically survived the 4 chapters of The Basement. A very fun and active room that felt so rewarding when completing some of the hardest/interesting puzzles I’ve seen in a room. The scares were atmospheric mostly sounds and the sense of the unknown. If you’re hesitant due to fear I wouldn’t worry too much. Definitely leans toward spooky thrills and not jump scares. Five Stars! Would play again.

The courtyard was the biggest room at the Basement. A good finale to the story. As with most of the rooms I think the hints were too frequent and unsolicited, although we got out very close to the wire we weren’t allowed to struggle with anything for more than 2 minutes before the GM was yelling through the wall. I think it’s because of the short time frame given. If it was a 60 minute room I think no one would need a hint ever. This series was my first experience with live actors, and this room made me feel so bad about solving the puzzle. I liked its set design a lot.

Amazing gameplay. Live actor was incredible.

my reviews for all The Basement rooms are gonna be pretty similar. pros: great sets & fun live actors in some rooms. cons: way too short (45 min limit & generally easy to finish even earlier), so not enough puzzles, the puzzles aren’t that creative, the main bottlenecks are not being able to find random things, & too many unsolicited hints from the (albeit very nice & well-intentioned) game masters. with 3 of my inexperienced friends, we were still somehow able to miss the leaderboard by just 30 seconds, so i would have rather gotten less unsolicited hints, even if it took us 15 more minutes, since we had so much time to spare.

Absolutely incredible atmosphere, unique and immersive puzzles that had us thinking outside of the box, but the live actor was an absolute standout.

This one was frustrating. The set was amazing; truly impressive. However, the lack of signposting and not knowing what a completed puzzle triggered (perhaps in a different room) was frustrating. Also, the live actor interaction was very strange. Do they really want me to do that to her? Hmmmm. Overall, I was disappointed. It still doesn’t deserve a thumbs down, but it could’ve been so much better.

The beginning of the room was a little frustrating for me. I felt like we chewed up a lot of time there. I remember doing a lot of fast walking between puzzles as a team of two. Overall, just eh.

This is probably the best horror series in LA. It’s worth going through every room.

Solid room, and a great live actor, but frustration with the overall experience. Did this as a team of two. Some tech issues (a mechanism didn’t properly work, costing us time). Frustratingly. the game master had totally disappeared at the one moment we needed a hint, near the end of the game. Several minutes later they responded to us, gave a hint for the previous puzzle, and then disappeared again for several more minutes. After the tech screwup, the MIA gamemaster, wrong hint etc, we needed about thirty more seconds (literally) to finish the game, but they ended it on the dot, with no reference to the mistakes—which felt a little shady to me, to be honest. The Basement feels a bit too close to a corporate, efficiency-oriented escape room business for my tastes—the ones that seek to maximize customers by pumping you in and out, depersonalizing the approach, etc. Also possibly a bit overwhelmed/understaffed. So it goes. But I’m sure other people have had better experiences here obviously.