Room Escape Artist

Escaping the post-drunken geekfest is a serious challenge.

Location: Colorado Springs, Colorado

Date played: September 5, 2015

Team size: up to 6; we recommend 3-5

Price: $28 per ticket

Story & theme

After a wild night, you and your friends wake up hungover in a hotel room. You deduce that you must be in a seedy part of town because everything in the room is locked… And for some reason you can’t open the front door either. You have to be someplace important in 70 minutes, so you have an hour to figure out what happened last night, find the key to the door, and get out in time to get to the event.

Escape The Place nailed this theme. The game looked like a crappy hotel room filled with junk that would probably keep some nerdy drunks occupied for hours. This isn’t an exciting theme, but oh boy did they commit to it.

Commitment to the theme

Like a good improv actor playing a sketch gone wrong, Escape The Place’s commitment to the theme and story of this game makes it work just enough.

Everything in this room was strangely on theme (if the game was set circa 2008… A first generation iPhone and a rented DVD play prominent roles in this game).

When we needed a hint, we picked up the landline phone to dial the front desk.

More scavenger hunt then puzzle room

This escape room has something like a 7% escape rate.

The room was packed with key locks. The core of this game was finding what we needed at a particular moment. Keys were labeled so we knew exactly where they went, but finding game components was one hell of a challenge.

There weren’t many puzzles in this room, but it was our first encounter with each of them. Still there just weren’t enough puzzles… And one of them basically took half of the team two-thirds of the game to solve.

That monster puzzle was the kind of puzzle that a team could nearly solve, but screw up in an irreparable manner. Thankfully we didn’t do that.

However, after solving all of the puzzles in the room, we could not find one last item that we needed to escape.

I actually enjoy losing in an escape game because I love encountering a puzzle that’s just too smart for us. It really stings to lose due to a hidden object.

Should I play Escape The Place’s The Hangover?

The Hangover was one of Escape The Place’s first rooms, and it wasn’t bad. The silliness of the room and the staff’s commitment to the joke held the game together.

The puzzles were original, outlandish, and at times flawed, but they fit, and they worked (with both skill and luck).

The Hangover won’t be your favorite game, but it would be a solid introduction to escape games. It’s clear that Escape The Place is on an upward trajectory. If we make it back out to Colorado Springs, I’d be happy to go checkout their future rooms.

Book your hour at Escape The Place’s The Hangover, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.