Kiralue
90 escape rooms
I really liked the layout and atmosphere of this room and loved our GM Ezra, but the puzzles in the room itself left quite a bit to be desired. Certain puzzles just didn't make sense and there were so many things that we realized were just red herrings meant to take up our time if we focused on them. While I am all for the occasional red herring and challenging puzzles, I don't think there should be so many that experienced teams can't get through the room without multiple hints. The puzzles themselves aren't overly complicated but relied heavily on you looking at the correct things in a large group of distractors. Hearing that the room only had a 40% pass rate overall made me wonder how many teams they had escape without any hints at all. Overall, the room has great potential but it would definitely benefit from some tweaking after running a few groups through without any hints to see where they get caught up.
Gameplay
The room is red herring heavy and you can and will spend a lot of time looking at entirely the wrong things if you are not careful. It made for fairly stilted gameplay for our team with large gaps of time between moments of progress.
Atmosphere
The room(s) itself has a very good atmosphere and, while somewhat worn down due to people damaging stuff, it does still look well kept.
Customer service
GM and staff are super welcoming and try their best to be helpful without ruining any experience. If time allows they even walk you through the rest of the puzzles so you can see the game through.
Particularly interesting or different
No
Story
Story itself was a bit loose and the name admittedly doesn't fit the area of the murder (San Diego).
Difficulty
Hard
The reason our team considered this a harder level room wasn't because the number of puzzles or the complexity but rather because of the number of red herrings. Several of the puzzles are intuitive and some can be done incorrectly in a way that would result in you not getting the codes you need. Our advice would be to not get too hung up on any one thing because there's a good chance its not what you think.
Game tech
Mechanical
Ideal number of players
4
Comfortable for 4. Any more might get a bit crowded.
Scary
Spooky
Spooky but not scary or anything more than atmosphere and lighting.
Youngest in group
12
Minimum age
12
Was anything broken?
Yes
Our group had issues with a switch that delayed us at the beginning. This issue wasn't apparent until we finished the room when we spoke to the GM. They were very respectful and went to look into the issue. During the experience they helped us along as they could not tell that we were having said issue.
Live actors
No
Physically active
Not at all
Accessibility
I wouldn't recommend this room to anyone who is colorblind or who has issues seeing in dim lighting.
Easy to find location
Yes
Parking
Medium
Parking immediately at and around the location is minimal but you can go the nearby residential and public parking.
Safety
Yes
