Escape Rooms

[Eliahad]

I just had the pleasure to try my first escape room tonight. AND IT WAS AWESOME!

This one was in a little strip mall, next to a chuck-e-cheeze. It actually seemed a little creepy, and the cops impounding cars in the parking lot did little to assuage that feeling. The actual business itself was great, though, clean, with puzzles in the lobby to keep you occupied while you waited for the rest of your party to show up.

Once you're all there, they read you the script for the theme of the puzzle. Basically, we were hiking and a storm was coming, we find a cabin, but no one's there. The theme is to find a way in, and radio for help. Then they let you into the room, and start the clock. Puzzles range from rebuses, to noticing logs that are hollow and have things inside them. There was one where this fence had a sign that you could press down that hit a switch that started a fountain flowing. So you had to fill a canteen to fill a device that had a key attached to a floater. Once it was full enough you could grab the key and unlock something else. And a cool one where you had to put on polarized sunglasses. When you looked at some tiles in a backsplash, some of the tiles were a different color through the sunglasses and they revealed a code.

It was a blast! We finished a room with a 40% success rate with about 10 minutes to go, only about 3 minutes off the leader board. If you need a hint, they'll totally give you one. The first one is free, but then you get a time penalty for the rest, though, honestly, we didn't really care about the timer. I think if we have a chance to try one at GenCon next year we should take a shot at it. I think it's worth the $30 price tag. Or at least, the one I did tonight was, I'm sure there's some variability in quality between places. My guess, though, is that the people at GenCon bring their A game. I personally won't do a horror themed one, but I'd be up for pretty much anything else.

[Bluedevyl]

I was just texting Pat about this over the weekend. I read that there's one opening on the Commons in Ithaca, and I've really wanted to try one.

If there's a good puzzler at Gen-Con, I'd love to try it out.