Overall:
Very enjoyable experience. The puzzles were clever and immersive. The rooms are well-designed and visually appropriate for their themes. Additionally, the rooms are quite large, the largest I have seen in escape rooms. The employees are enthusiastic and really good at providing clues appropriately - they have an "immersive cluing" system where they send you clues as they think you need them, without you having to ask. That's very helpful when you aren't sure how fast you should be progressing, as it can be hard to figure out how much content is left in a room. Our game master, Zay, was quite good at judging whether we needed a little nudge or if we just needed to figure it out ourselves. They also allow overtime, so you don't need to worry about not finishing and missing out on room content.
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Our Puzzle - Grim Stacks:
Puzzles (No Spoilers):
The puzzle we tried was Grim Stacks. Our game master was Zay. The puzzles were quite good, very complex and well-designed. I particularly enjoyed a puzzle that involved listening for sounds to find a pattern. I did think that one of the puzzles could have used a bit better signalling in the puzzle - there's an obscure connection you have to make from a list to books to colors that wasn't intuitive. However, the "immersive cluing" that they do kept us from getting frustrated without just solving the puzzle for us, so even that was still a good experience.
While many of the puzzles did involve finding codes for locks, they all had multiple stages and were quite complex. No finding codes on the wall and entering them blindly in this room!
Recommended Tools:
Definitely would recommend a notebook for this one. A flashlight was helpful for our group because of eyesight issues, but many people would be just fine without one, as the room was very well-lit. No puzzles that were only hard because the room was dim here!
Accessibility:
At least one person in your group should be able to ascend 3 steps up and 3 steps down to access a new room, but everyone else can use a normal door with no steps. (They could probably accommodate by having the game master open when appropriate; they seemed very flexible.) As it says on their website, if you have people who cannot stand for long periods, chairs are either in the room already as props or will be brought in on request. Almost all rooms are fully wheelchair accessible and solvable - check their FAQ for an up-to-date list.
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Other Games Overview:
As a bonus, probably because we came on a slow day and nobody was booked after us, we were allowed to do a brief tour of some other rooms. Every one looked gorgeous (and large), particularly the Curse on the Emerald Seas room (pirate theme) and the The Path room (Zen/Japanese theme). We were told that The Path actually has no locks at all, which sounds like an amazing experience, though it was the smallest room physically. Also, every room has easter eggs related to the room designer or Puzzle Effect employees. They design their own rooms in-house, which I feel really shines through in the quality of the rooms and the enthusiasm they have for running the games.
Jeff
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