Mantis
66 escape rooms
Caveat: If you want to try this room, you should. - and judge it for yourself. The unique experience may be divisive. The set design is immersive and the challenge is unapologetically difficult. I was excited for a 90-min escape room. Variety of puzzles. I really wanted to love it. However, I did not. Now...the aspects I didn't like about the room - you may find them enticing: 1. Too Non-Linear I have enjoyed playing non-linear rooms (like The Escape Game's Playground and Escape Hour Austin's Tesla vs Edison). But this room can isolate you to an extent where you lose track of what's going on and lose context. I am someone who wants to be aware of all the puzzles that need to be solved and participate as much as possible. There is a certain section where 1-2 people could end up spending an inordinate amount of time crawling about in a dark, cramped space while the rest of the game goes by. 2. Contrived Difficulty Tough puzzles can be rewarding to solve. But adding superficial layers to a puzzle to make it difficult just for the sake of making it difficult stops being fun at one point. You have connected the dots, figured out what goes where, and just need to input the final solution. But then if the solution requires you to distinguish between 3 different colors that are similar in hue in poor lighting at a hard to access corner, it gets frustrating. Some of the signaling was vague. You can end up wasting a lot of time looking for the right thing at the wrong place. Some helpful nudges from the GM would have been been greatly appreciated. 3. Imbalanced Design A 90-min challenge is inviting. But there are a lot of puzzles. Which is fine...except every one of them is complex and has potential for time-drain. If you take a very scary escape room with an unpredictable live actor (for eg.), a well balanced experience will not make the puzzles themselves overly difficult because the fear factor naturally makes everything more challenging. That kind of gameplay balance was missing here with the complexity, length, and number of puzzles. I would definitely not recommend this one for beginners. It's better suited for a team of 6 experienced players. Maybe the factors that made the experience lukewarm for us will motivate you to try the room more! Just go in mentally prepared.
Gameplay
Non-linear gameplay. But you can get bottlenecked by some puzzles that could take a long time to solve. Additionally, those long puzzles can isolate those players from the rest of the game and they may miss out on several puzzles. Gameplay felt imbalanced with the difficulty level.
Atmosphere
Immersive. Even the nondescript entrance created a layer of anonymity and intrigue that fed into the gamespace.
Customer service
The GM was friendly and tried to be helpful during our game. But we wish the GM was paying more attention to our game because some of the clues were for the wrong section that resulted in time wastage.
Particularly interesting or different
Yes
It's one of the unique escape rooms out there. Will you like it? That will depend on your group.
Story
Premise sets you up. Story doesn't develop necessarily.
Difficulty
Expert
For enthusiasts and adepts. Some puzzles can take quite long.
Game tech
Mechanical
Ideal number of players
6
Suited for experienced players. Non-linearity demands 2-3 puzzles being tackled simultaneously.
Scary
Not scary
Was anything broken?
Yes
Initial audio for the intro did not operate. GM stepped in to fill us in. Wasn't sure if a certain light switch would fade out quickly by design or was it just not strong enough.
Live actors
No
Physically active
Somewhat
Some players may need to spend extended time in a crawlspace.
Easy to find location
No
By design, the entrance wasn't obvious. Which I did not mind because it added to the experience. Just budget some extra time in case you need to call them to confirm your location. It's a black door facing W 3rd street by the Domino's.
Parking
Limited
There are about 10 parking spots in the small parking lot in front of the Domino's. But if it's full, you will need to find street parking across. Budget extra time for finding parking and walking to the door.
Safety
Yes
