Has anyone tried these? There are now three places in my town that offer “escape games”. I haven’t tried them, but I am curious about them, and would go if I got enough people to join me. What are they like? Are they worth it?
I haven’t been to one, so I couldn’t tell you what they’re like, but I’d like to go. I’ve even considered suggesting it for a Dopefest, but those aren’t as popular as they once were.
I haven’t, but my wife has.
They usually have a facilitator (like a “zombie” or whatever) in the room in case you get really stuck. The downside is that they won’t let you get away with some things that you would normally do in real life.
Two examples:
One, there was a clue posted on the ceiling. You were supposed to find a pair of binoculars to read the lettering. One of the team decided to just move a nearby table over, stand on it, and pull the clue off the ceiling to read it. “Uh, you can’t stand on the table for liability reasons” “Why does the zombie that wants to eat us care about liability” “Uh, I mean, braiiiiiiiins but seriously stay off the table”.
Two, there was a combination lock that needed 6 numbers to open. The team had found 5 of them. They realized that brute forcing the last number would be way faster than solving some puzzle they weren’t interested in. “Uh, you’re supposed to be looking for a clue by the bookshelf instead of trying a bunch of combinations” “It’s just a lock, it’s faster to do it this way. Plus, aren’t you supposed to be trying to eat us?” “Um, gaaaarrr but really don’t brute force it”
She had fun but it felt very artificial at times.
I went to one in Portland, ME a few months ago, and I had a blast. Unfortunately, we mistranslated a Morse code clue and lost some time - would have made it out if we’d had two more minutes.
We didn’t exactly go in with a plan, but my group was all friends and no strangers. The doors opened and we just kind of fanned out and started pulling open things and looking carefully at everything. There were four doors in the room we were put in. One was the door back to the lobby, which we were supposed to ignore - they don’t actually lock it for safety reasons, but we were to treat it as another section of wall. Another door had four combination locks on it - that was the door we had to get through. A third door that we ended up finding a key for led to a smaller room with more clues, and the fourth door was a red herring that we tried way too long to find a way to open.
The one in Portland has two active rooms that they switch out to new puzzles every few months so you can go back over and over. We’re hoping to go hit one of the new ones later this summer. I felt the whole experience was a solid mix of critical thinking, thorough searching, and stupid luck. You definitely learn which of your friends are good under pressure, though.
Which one did you go to in Portland? That is where I live.
Holy crap, really? Then maybe I gave too many details. 
I think it was just called Escape Room. It’s on Congress. Ah, here it is. They have two rooms at any given time. The one I was in was called The Bunker. The rest of our friends were in the Stephen King Room, which is no longer active (they got out in 48 minutes and totally lorded it over my group). It was twenty bucks per person, I think, and I thought it was well worth the money. And even kind of worth the two hours in the car back and forth. I had a lot of fun with it. If I’d been thinking clearly, I probably would have booked both rooms back to back and made it worth the long drive (I live in Bangor).
Darn. I’ve been intrigued by the ones popping up around here, too, but this would totally ruin it for me. If I can’t use all of my ingenuity and simple or obvious solutions then why bother?
There was nobody in the room with us when we did it. We did have a walkie-talkie to get hints when we wanted them (I think we were given up to three of them), but nobody actually there. We brute-forced a bunch of stuff, like taking the top drawer out of a filing cabinet rather than waiting to find the key for the bottom one, or my very small friend getting her very small hand into a still-locked toolbox to retrieve what was inside. My roommate also “accidentally” snapped the cover off a box rather than finding the key that opened it.
But “admonishment zombie” is totally a job I’d excel at.
I’ve done 3 or 4 in NYC (in the last year they’ve become very popular and there are a shitload of them in the city now).
I’ve enjoyed them all. Failed on 1 and almost hit a record on another. If you have a couple people you can go with I highly recommend trying one.
I’ve done low-tech ones (just keys/locks/papers/etc) and more high-tech ones (computers involved) and enjoyed both. None of the ones I’ve done have had anyone in the room with us. Aside from not destroying the place, we pretty much could do things the way we wanted.
A friend of mine is part of a group starting one of these places in my town. I signed up to be a beta tester when they’re ready.
A few weeks ago, my wife and I went to the recently opened Boda Borg Boston. They have 16-20 quests, each with multiple rooms and unique themes. Quests are either strong intellectual (green), strong physical (black), or a moderate mix of the two (red).
The red quests mostly involve some amount of crawling and climbing, but nothing especially strenuous, along with the moderate puzzles. The black quests are the most physically taxing, and are generally more straightforward. The green quests have little to no physical aspect, and focus on intellectual puzzles.
We had a blast, and will definitely be back to try more quests.
I have completed an entire company of them here in Orlando. And half of the rooms in two other games.
I love them. I’m addicted to them. And I think everyone should do it!
Tht’s the one I want to try. In Malden, isn’t it?
My wife and two adult daughters just did one. We missed getting out of the room by about 5 minutes, basically, just one more puzzle.
I don’t want to give away too much, but this one was in a very dimly-lit room. One of the puzzles was a math puzzle based on the colors in a painting (not really a paint-by-number exercise, but I don’t want to give away too much). Unfortunately, this particular puzzle had several colors that were too close to each other, such as Dark Blue, Really Dark Blue, and Black. There were actually two sets of colors that could have gone either way.
One of my daughters is very artistic, and she said, “OK, the first value is that orange color.” Well, 7 or 8 minutes later I discovered that it was brown, which had a different value, so we were off mathematically from the very start. Even using the flashlight on my cell phone did not really differentiate the colors.
Because we lost so much time on that one puzzle, we never got out of the room, and we starved and died. I’m all that’s left. Please send help!
All the other puzzles were good, but we all thought the color-based one was less-than-perfectly executed. I can’t imagine what would happen if a team of color-blind people were trying to solve the puzzle.
It was a fun exercise, and our family had a great time. We will probably do it again next year. At nearly $30/person, we thought it was a little pricey.
We did one for my birthday in March and I think it was one of the funnest things we’ve ever done. It was in Mesquite (a suburb of Dallas) and they gave you clues via a computer screen. No one in the room with you and you were allowed to solve any problems any way you could. The place we went had three different choices (ours was steampunk – yay!) and we solved it with mere seconds to spare.
It alternated between pretty difficult (similar to the color puzzle mentioned above) to some really easy by just twisting / finding a thing or two. This group are adding two more rooms soon and was less expensive (about $18 a piece) than most. I can’t recommend it enough. Even the ones in our bunch who weren’t much good at this kind of thing had a ball being including and rushing around to push buttons and look over or under stuff. Can’t wait to play again someday.
Not to intentionally zombify the thread, but if you’re still looking to go somewhere in Portland, I would recommend Maine Escape Games (by the mall on John Roberts Rd.) over Escape Room ME (on Congress Street). I went to both this weekend for an event, and MEG is by far the better experience. Harder puzzles, more involved storytelling, better immersion, and technologically more advanced.
Oh sorry, didn’t see this reply. Yes, Boda Borg Boston is in Malden.
We did one in the spring and are doing another in a couple of weeks.
It was more difficult - and more fun - than I expected. The clues were pretty complex and varied. We made it out of the room with less than a minute to spare. The success rate for this particular room is around 20%.
What impressed me the most, I think:
The escape path out of the room was actually a hidden ‘tunnel’ that we had to crawl through. We accessed the escape route by moving a large bookcase. I thought that was a pretty authentic touch.
mmm
These sound fascinating to me but the ones in my area all describe their rooms as requiring something like 12 people. If just me and my husband go, they’ll assign us a room with 10 strangers. It would totally ruin the fun for me if one or more of those strangers turned out to be a handicap to solving the room. (Think school group projects.)
I have failed an escape room only twice out of 12 or so. The first time was our fault because we thought too hard.
The second time was because we were stuck with people outside of our party, and they screwed us over multiple times for us to lose.
I really want to say “it’ll be fun anyway!” but…it actually might not be.