Escape Room Review– 60 to Escape Milwaukee
As part of my recent series on escape rooms, I’m going to review one of the best escape room companies in Milwaukee: 60 to Escape. Located in Southridge Mall, 60 to Escape has another branch in Gurnee, Illinois, which I have not yet visited. The Milwaukee branch opened a few years ago, and over the past year and five months my friends and I have played and won all five of their rooms. All are great, with terrific, immersive production values.
Invasion!
In the first room we played at 60 to Escape, the premise seems very simple. You’re part of a neighborhood baseball team, when an errant hit sends your baseball through the window of a mysterious house. When the young boy who helps your team disappears after trying to retrieve it, the rest of you are forced to figure out how to get inside the creepy, dilapidated house and find your friend and your baseball.
It’s arguably the hardest room of the five, and one where it really helps to have a group of at least four people to complete it. There’s one room that requires bending or crawling to get into, and players have to pass through it at least twice. If that’s a problem, a special accommodation can be made to go through a different door, but players with mobility issues should ask ahead of time.
One of the rooms makes you go “Wow!” once you walk into it, and there’s even an animatronic that’s crucial to the game as well. The puzzles are complex and sometimes require the players to go beyond the obvious. There’s even a decision players have to make at the end that shapes the entire tone of the conclusion, and it’s interesting to think about what makes player pick the decisions that they do.
Filled with moments and details that make you go “Wow!,” “Invasion!” is a great room for experienced players with teams that work well together.
Pirate’s Curse
Here, you go down into a subterranean grotto to search for lost pirate’s treasure. Once again, the setting is brilliant, especially an optical illusion midway through that may make some people very nervous, and there’s a jump scare early in the game that people should be prepared for, but it all adds to the fun of the game.
The regular play of the game probably won’t take the whole hour, but there are five small bonus puzzles to complete. You don’t need to finish them all to win, but successfully completing them nets you a little bonus prize.
The one problem with this game is that it’s dark. It’s so dark that it was impossible for me to see one of the bonus puzzles, even when I knew where it was. Otherwise, it’s arguably my favorite of the rooms.
Casino Heist
In this game, perhaps the smallest of the rooms, you go to an underwater casino in order to steal gold bars from the safe. After finding a way to get your “submarine” to the target, you must play a number of gambling game-based puzzles to find your way inside the safe. There’s a great twist towards the end that will have players wondering “Whoa! How did they do that?” It’s fun, interesting and challenging, leaving you with a deep appreciation for the game makers and designers.
Warning: Features a little smoke at one point.
Merlin’s Legacy
Here, you go to a magical world and fight a dragon. You begin in a wizard’s laboratory filled with spell books and wants and potions and magical artifacts, and your quest takes you through some dark and sinister places until it culminates in a climactic battle. Once again, this isn’t just a bit of office space with some pre-bought puzzles. The production values are insanely good, especially one giant animatronic. The puzzles are challenging but not too hard at first, though some of the puzzles in one room are a bit harder due to the limited light. We still managed to win with plenty of time, and the music that was very close to the Harry Potter soundtrack but not quite– you gotta avoid that copyright infringement– added nicely to the magical atmosphere.
Warning: At one point there are flashing lights that may bother some players, and a little smoke as well.
The Storm
In the most recent room, you play members of a gang of hopeful would-be henchmen for a supervillain who has developed a device that can control the weather. You need to fix the broken machine, because right now it’s stuck on “tornado.” You find yourself exploring a slightly weather-beaten barn and farmhouse, figuring out how to find the machine and fix it. Of all five games, this is by far the easiest. My team and I finished with over sixteen minutes to spare. The puzzle style is a bit different, as there are some more intuitive puzzles, and the problems are a bit simpler. At times I anticipated a more complex twist, only to find that the obvious solution was the correct one. I do note that in the other four rooms, there was a board to write clues upon, and there wasn’t one in “The Storm.” It’d be an easy fix to provide one.
Given the relative ease of this room, I’d recommend it for newcomers to escape rooms and younger players.
Warning: At one point, a player will have to crawl on one’s hands and knees, and at one point there will also be a lot of odd-smelling smoke. A powerful wind machine will blow throughout the game.
In conclusion, if you’re an escape room fan and you’re in Milwaukee, you can’t go wrong with 60 to Escape.
–Chris Chan
Chris Chan’s anthology Of Course He Pushed Him and Other Sherlock Holmes Stories Volumes 1 & 2 was released on June 22nd. His first novel, Sherlock’s Secretary, was released by MX Publishing. His Agatha-nominated book Murder Most Grotesque: The Comedic Crime Fiction of Joyce Porter was published by Level Best Books. His first non-fiction book, Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia” is available for sale at Amazon.com and the MX Publishing website, as well as at Book Depository (with free worldwide shipping there). It is also available in a Kindle edition.
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