Grand Elven Adventure

Rating: 4/5 I enjoyed it, but it does have its issues, it's a good choice for Indianapolis. It's one of ER USA's best rooms, though that's not saying much, I would not travel here just to play this. This is more of a puzzle room, than escape room. The goal is to solve as many puzzles as you can to collect coins. The "scaling difficulty" is just based on how high your score is at the end based on the total weight of the coins. Pros: -Beautiful set, ER USA has some of the best looking sets I've seen in the area -Multiple levels and areas to explore -Fun ways to access the different areas -Interesting concept, collecting physical coins was more satisfying than if it was just ambiguous points -Not too linear, plenty of puzzles to solve simultaneously -75 min, I enjoy longer rooms Could be better: -Quality of the puzzles do not live up to the quality of the set -There is tech, but still too many padlocks and lock boxes for a room released in late 2023, especially since it's supposed to be "state of the art," though it's an improvement on their last room, Dark Wyvern -Decent variety of puzzles but nothing particularly fun or interesting for me, many are forgettable -The room just ends when the time is up, there's no climax -Long and detailed backstory at the beginning but basically none of it is applied to the room itself Cons: -Some puzzles were finicky, tedious, or didn't activate correctly -Most areas are too dark, especially since there is a lot of reading, no flashlights provided -No easy way to track the time without asking the game master -People with limited mobility will not be able to explore the whole set as there are very steep steps My group of 4 got the 2nd highest level based on the coins, there were still a few puzzles unsolved. I would recommend 4-5 people, I would not want to do this with 2 due to the amount of puzzles. There are some tighter spaces so you don't want too many people.

The set of Grand Elven Adventure was absolutely incredible! You can tell the company spent a lot of time trying to make the game immersive - even before you entered the room. The hallway leading into the room looked like you were entering the forest. This is not a “typical” escape room, where you solve a number of puzzles and escape within the 75 allotted minutes. Instead, this is set up more like a video game. Your objective is to collect coins that you unlock through completing puzzles. At the end of your 75 minutes, your coins are “weighed” and you see which level you completed and whether you helped the elves escape. Things I liked about the room: -everyone at The Escape Room USA was really nice. They had issues resetting the room before our time and we had several people come over and let us know they were working on it -the set was so immersive! I felt like I was actually on a quest in the forest. I was so in awe at the “potions room”. -I think most of the puzzles were pretty intuitive Things I think could use some work: -some of the clues (specifically the capsules you unlock) were jokes you had to know. (As far as I could tell - there was nothing pointing to the answer). I thought they were pretty easy, but I’ve also been burned in other rooms where the joke “should have been obvious” and we spent so much time spinning our wheels -there were A LOT of puzzles. We had a group of 4 and we felt that some of the rooms we were pretty cramped in. Some of the games (not all) were linear - you needed to unlock something to be able to have the pieces to complete a puzzle - so if we had more people, I don’t think we necessarily would have been able to complete more puzzles. -some of the set wasn’t accessible. There were some stairs to a second floor and a good number of puzzles were up there. I wasn’t comfortable heading up stairs we had built ourselves. There was also an issue with lighting in some of the rooms where it was hard to see the clues -there was at least one puzzle I feel like you definitely needed to write down the numbers. I think having something to write on would have helped a lot. -I wish we got a chance to do more of the puzzles! There was one fishing section that I was super excited to do (not a fault of the company - just me wishing our team was able to get through more!) Overall, I think this was a definite like. Really unique concept and great set. There were a lot of locks in the room for those who prefer a bit more high tech room and some of the mechanical items were a bit glitchy when we went (although to the aforementioned them having technical issues resetting the room - could have just been a product of that and not typical for the room).