The Alchemist

Alchemist: This alchemists lab held many ancient secrets waiting to be discovered. Our group had to reveal them all and unite the four elements before the alchemist returned. Pros: The set designs in the rooms at Escape LA are absolutely fantastic. We especially loved the alchemist set for its ingenuity and immersive feel. The cavern and the theater were also quite impressive. These rooms were very large with lots of room for movement which is great given the large group size. The puzzles were multi-linear, aligned to the story themes, generally logical and fun to solve. The puzzle master deserves praise for the effort put into aligning these to the overarching narrative. Cons: We have very conflicting feelings about our experience at Escape LA. On the one hand, the puzzles were fun and the sets in the rooms blew us away. On the other hand, the large group size, massive number of the puzzles, and very limited time frame severely detracted from our full enjoyment of the experience. Elsewhere In this blog we have railed against large group sizes and the limitations they place on a positive and productive playing environment. We will not repeat those points here except to say that once again (three times again) our theory on this was validated through our game play at Escape Room LA. We detest group sizes over six and recommend escape room owners think more about the player perspective in a game with this many people. Even with the large numbers of players in the room (10-12) we did not have nearly enough time to solve the multiple numbers of puzzles in these rooms. Although we enjoyed the puzzles and their clear ties to the theme, we felt there were far too many to solve in the time frame. With only 50 minutes instead of the standard 60 minutes the buzzer often went off with the exclamation from the game master "Oh so close, only two minutes away." In all three of the games we were only one puzzle away or one box in process of opening before a successful escape. The missing ten minutes and ridiculous number of puzzles explains the low escape rate at Escape LA. Even with our extensive game play knowledge, we found ourselves overwhelmed and short of time. We also had mixed encounters with the various game masters who were ever present in the rooms. We generally disapprove of game masters in the room since they tend to intervene either too frequently or discourage the free-thinking of players. This was no exception. The game masters interrupted our thoughts to say "don't touch that" or "that's not important" which tended to suppress the exploratory, trial and error approach to problem-solving that is essential to an enjoyable escape room experience. Instead, players often turned to them asking for permission to touch items or advice on how to proceed, in effect robbing them of independent thought and action. We did however truly appreciate the very thorough walk-through and debrief at the conclusion of each game. This should be standard practice at all escape room venues. Major props to Escape Room LA on the set design. Truly remarkable craftsmanship and creativity.

Puzzles flowed really well together. Things were parallelizable when they needed to be. The actor in the room was not over hinting. 2nd best room at Escape Room LA.

This room is the reason why I always check to make sure rooms are private. Their rooms are “hard” because they fill them to the brim with puzzles and then fill it with strangers who knows how well they work together. It was a horrible experience.

I wasn’t a fan of this room but we also failed big time so feel free to call me biased. Also, played several years ago, so my memory might be hazy - therefore take this with a grain of salt. This was precovid so you were allowed to book rooms with strangers, which I did. I think the MINIMUM for this room was like… 10 people? And man, did they mean that. We were a part of 10 right before the GM came up to us and told us people had dropped out of the booking… Nothing we could do so we went ahead. The first room wasn’t that crazy, we got a little lost and also skipped through a puzzle or 2 but the second room was our downfall, and I don’t know if it continued after that but it didn’t matter because we didn’t. They split the group into 4 smaller teams so you could each work on 4 element puzzle, and we only had enough people for 2 teams, so we got stuck pretty quickly, plus we had limited hints (the GM was super awesome through all of this btw and very funny). Our time ran out and that was that. I think mostly it was very hard (which it was advertised as being) and we were beginners so that’s on us entirely, but I didn’t find the puzzles themselves to be that fun to do. It was a long time ago but I do remember there were elements of figuring out codes and science-y puzzles that I didn’t find engaging. I thought it would be more mystery and fantasy based but they really went literal scientist/alchemist with it, which was a disappointment to me. It was kind of fun but I think that was more that I enjoyed my friends company, and mostly we left feeling kind of bummed and underwhelmed by the experience. The set was ok - lots of stone from what I remember and stuff like scales and books - but I’ll be sure to research more carefully before I come back to this venue. I have a feeling with the right amount of people picking/having a better idea of what the story is, we’ll have a much more fun time, but for now, not a fan of this particular room. I know it’s closed, there’s a video of it on YouTube if anybody wants to see what it looked like!

One of my favorite rooms from this company. It was varied, had a strong theme, and created an entertaining experience.