We’ve just booked a game with your escape room company!
Here’s what to expect from us.
We’re fans
We’re just a couple who love puzzles and interactive experiences. We started this site to share our love of the games, help players decide what games are best for them, and push owners to make better games.
More players means more money in the owners’ pockets. More money flowing in means more elaborate and interesting games. More elaborate and interesting games means we get to have more fun.
If you’re interested in learning more about us… you can feel free to stalk us.
Near New York City?
We’re from just outside of Manhattan in New Jersey. If you’re located nearby, we’re probably going to show up with a very experienced team, and we very rarely lose.
Home field advantage is a real thing.
We also try to bring one or two newbies to each game so that we can spread the joy of being locked in a room and solving your way out.
Not near NYC?
We might not have anyone to bring with us. We bat about 75% on the road.
We’re good at these things, but in spite of our best efforts, we’re still human.
Reviews
Yup. We’re going to write a review of your game.
We work hard to remain as objective as possible. We wait two or three days after playing your game to write our review. We do this so that we have some distance from the experience. A little distance levels us out and keeps us from feeling like we were either too soft or too hard on you.
Your review will go live on our site one to three weeks after we play your game. We usually have posts scheduled at least a week in advance. We do this so we can maintain a regular publishing schedule.
Posts typically go live at 10:01am (because palindrome) on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays.
You don’t have to check our site for your review, we will email after it goes live. However we wouldn’t be upset if you chose to subscribe to us (over on the right) or follow us on Facebook or Twitter. Any of those methods will deliver your review to you faster than our more personalized email.
Immediate feedback
We’re not so great at giving immediate feedback after we emerge from your room (I am particularly bad at it… sometimes uncomfortably so).
We take our time, compare notes, and talk through every observable nuance of your game before we put fingers to keyboard and write our review. If you wait, you’re going to get better feedback.
Personalized feedback
After your review posts, we’d be happy to chat for 15 or 20 minutes and give you personalized feedback.
We’ll also answer any questions you may have about our review, as we are deliberately vague with details because spoilers suck.
Spoilers?
We’re very good about describing an experience without giving anything away. No one can say nothing in ~700 words quite like we can.
We don’t publish spoilers for your room unless there is something incredibly dangerous. Even then, we will only discuss the dangerous element. I think we’ve done this once or twice. We weren’t happy about it.
We generally keep the details limited to what is immediately visible at the start of the game.
What can you do to get a better review?
There’s not much.
If you look back over our reviews, you’ll see that there are companies we love who we’ve given some tough love to, and there are some companies that have shocked us with amazing games.
None of this is personal (whether the review is positive, negative, or somewhere in the middle).
If you’re going to do anything special, make sure that everything in the room is set up properly, and that everything works. I’d encourage you to do that before every game, but if I never had to write about how badly we were screwed by a bad setup again, I’d be very happy about that.
We hate writing negative reviews. We don’t derive any pleasure from bad experiences, and we really dislike having to tell the Internet that we didn’t have fun.
Ultimately we’re going to review the experience we had… Not the experience that the game could have been, or probably will be.
What should you do with our review?
Whatever you’d like.
Share them on social media or on your websites or don’t.
Use it as free consulting, reach out to us with followup questions, or write us off as arrogant assholes.
To date, many companies have reworked parts of their games based on our reviews and one company completely shut down a game and rebuilt it from the ground up because of our review.
We’re rooting for you and your business.
We look forward to meeting you.
