Escape Room Review–Escape Chambers
Escape Chambers was the first escape room I ever played, and when my friends and I played it, it was located in the Grand Avenue Mall in downtown Milwaukee. It was a chain, though it seems that over the last six years, a great many of its franchises have shuttered. The Milwaukee room had four games, and we played “The Assignment,” where we had to search a scholar’s office for evidence of wrongdoing. I don’t know if there are any more Escape Chambers around the country that have the room available.
In my group of three friends, one had played several rooms, and I and the third member of the group were newbies. I can’t blame Escape Chambers for our trouble with the initial puzzle, but I will say that if we were to try again with our new experience, we would do a lot better. It took us a long time to get going, but once we did, I was surprised and happy by how well we worked as a team and started solving the puzzles.
In terms of production values, it was pretty basic– a bunch of items arranged in an office space. It just didn’t seem like more than it was. Perhaps the most frustrating aspect was the hints– you had three, but to get them, you had to disassemble these interlocking mental loops. We only managed to separate one pair, and frankly, they took up too much time. I much prefer being given a certain amount of clues (or unlimited is fine, too), and simply asking.
Most of the puzzles were of a reasonable level of difficulty, but of all the escape rooms my friends and I have done, this is probably my least favorite, and not just because we lost. We came close to finishing, at least, and as a first introduction to the genre, it was enough to get us hooked, but not enough to be an exhilarating experience, especially when compared to many of the other rooms we’ve played over the years. Overall, the quality was pretty basic and the game lacked the imagination and style of the best rooms. Our game master said this was the hardest room, and as such, it certainly wasn’t the ideal choice for newcomers to escape rooms.
–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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