The Gift

This was a decent, fun room. We were told afterwards the escape rate is a very low 38%. We completed the room in 44.5 minutes as an experienced team of 2. We were aiming for the weekly record but missed it by 3 minutes because there are some parts that were ehhhh There were some clever puzzles in this game for sure. But there were also parts that didn't have enough breadcrumbs. Ironically, the store in the storyline is named "Red Herring," and there were definitely issues with some flow in this game. There are a decent amount of combo locks in this game, and sometimes you have multiple ones at the same time, so it's not always clear which one you'll open with your current 4-digit answer... Other puzzles you have to stretch your thinking or attention a little bit more than usual. There's a phone and a phone number, but you don't input the expected phone number format into the phone... what. Perhaps most frustratingly, we were told that one puzzle is arranged differently because we only had 2 players. We lost a lot of time on this one. It's clear that you need to activate three sensors simultaneously. Usually, you are given 3 props to do this. However, apparently because we only have 2 players, they only give us 2 of those props. And we are just supposed to KNOW that we can use one prop to do two sensors at once??? Just give us all 3 props even if we only have 2 players... This part was baffling. There were some fun puzzles and some new puzzles we had never seen, so overall we still enjoyed the room despite the flow and overall game design issues. I liked the first room of the set. The rest was okay. The storyline seemed to make sense before the game started, but it felt like an incomplete story when we finished the game. That could probably be thought out better. Also, don't forget you have to push the button to officially finish the game! It doesn't just end when the door opens.

A good game that flowed well, but had some minor elements that stopped it from being a great game. The biggest problem with this game was just that there wasn't enough content. When we finished the game, we were expecting one or more additional areas to the game. We had 34 minutes left.

This would have been a full 👍🏼 had we not had such a terrible game master who honestly forgot about us. There were a few moments where we were truly stuck and decided to ask for a clue… well… those clues never came because our game master was just gone. Silent. Nothing. Not to mention when we first started this room, they didn’t set it up fully from the last group so we started in the final room unknowingly (door was open) and the game master came in, told us to put everything back, and had us restart. She was MIA for the rest of the game after that. Luckily we were able to figure it out on our end but frustrating experience over all.

Overall a frustrating room with a beautiful set. Sometimes with these chains, I wish they would bring in a good self-designed escape room company owner to give them some feedback. Small changes to clarify flow and story would make this a solid game. As is, it’s ok but skippable. There is a part where you put a non phone number into a phone despite having a phone number that is never used. So annoying. Also the final puzzle was frustrating instead of fun. It’s a pretty set though!

By far my favorite experience at this location! This heist has unique in the types of puzzles and locations that you are involved in throughout the room. This non-linear experience had the best continuity between rooms and puzzles, with a lot of the puzzles being super satisfying to put together and finally complete. The final puzzle sequence was super fun to manipulate and even though it was finicky at times felt super satisfying to pull off.

This was a super cool room! I especially loved the atmosphere in the first room. Some very unique puzzles as well. Thanks, Rico, for a great experience!

Solid escape room with a good number and variety of puzzles—including one puzzle mechanic we haven’t seen before in ~250 rooms, so that’s always a positive! This was our favorite of the 3 rooms we did here (and perhaps our favorite room that day including 2 at another company), so I bumped the rating from what is objectively-speaking more of just a 👍 to a ❤️. Would definitely recommend to beginners and enthusiasts alike. We did it as just 2 enthusiasts and got out in ~35 minutes with just one hint on something we admittedly should’ve figured out and kind of saw on our own, but we were rushing because they had booked our timeslot incorrectly and we had to get through the room as quickly as possible to keep the schedule moving (which is NOT how I we like to experience escape rooms but we were left with no choice here). (Long story short: If you book in December for a room in February, the online booking system will show timeslots that won’t actually exist in February because they run different holiday hours in December, and they can’t list different timeslots for December vs. February. Why on earth this would be the system design and how the manager/staff did not catch this issue for our bookings is beyond me. 🤯 At least they tried to help us rush through our rooms so we could still fit in all 3 bookings we’d made… but it definitely marred our experiences with these rooms. And at least they gave us a gift card for the inconvenience, which was a nice gesture.)

It was ok I don’t like the click button clue because all we wanted was batteries for the flashlight and they gave us a clue. It was a cool room not as challenging as I would’ve wanted.

We’ve done most of the rooms here. This one might be… second favorite? The design/theme is really fun, just don’t pay too much attention to the story haha. Sometimes the pacing seems off - you can collect lots of stuff, but only one puzzle matters at a time. And one puzzle was a little too ambiguous to interpret. But that being said, this room had some really great puzzles and we really felt like we were committing a heist. Staff was great. Place was clean and welcoming. The Gift is good for casual to experienced players.