“Ready or not here they come. IT’S ZOMBIE TIME!”
Location: Cheektowaga, NY
Date played: January 21, 2017
Team size: 4-10; we recommend 4-6
Duration: 60 minutes
Price: $30 per ticket
Note: Locked-Up Escape Games’ Locked in a Room with a Zombie is NOT related to the prolific and playful Trapped in a Room with a Zombie games.
Story & setting
We weren’t alone: a ravenous zombie was chained up and eager to devour us. Every 5 minutes the length of his chain increased, giving him access to more of the room, while reducing our access to its puzzles. The structure was clearly a derivative of the broadly available Trapped in a Room with a Zombie series.
The room felt like it belonged in an old manor. We were locked in a study and its adjacent bathroom. While thematically uninteresting, a dingy grandeur brought a foreboding excitement to the environment. Plus… the zombie looked pretty intimidating.
The space felt a little spooky, but not too scary. We were comfortable enough exploring our surroundings and puzzling our way out… but for the zombie chasing us. While the zombie looked compelling, he was less fear-inducing and more adrenaline-pumping as he moved efficiently and didn’t give us a lot of openings for puzzling.
Puzzles
The key to the puzzles in Locked in a Room with a Zombie was strategically choosing what to start with. As the zombie received more chain, otherwise easy puzzles became massive challenges.
The puzzles themselves combined tactile and paper-based puzzling with both standard locks and technologically triggered mechanisms.
There was plenty to play with.
Standouts
Our zombie kept the game balanced between challenging, exciting, and conquerable. He was distractible and predictable enough that we could figure out how to maneuver around him, yet determined enough that that wasn’t easy. I have to assume that he was aware of our capabilities and could easily adjust his level of aggression based on a team’s behavior in-game. He did all of this while remaining a convincing character.
Locked in a Room with a Zombie had some excellent puzzling. This included some would-be easy puzzles that were made exponentially more challenging by the hangry zombie. Through this, Locked-Up Escape Games demonstrated thoughtful game design.
We rarely praise home or office settings, but Locked-Up Escape Games managed to bring their manor to life. We felt like we were in another world.
Locked-Up Escape Games brought sincerity and depth to an early escape room concept. The set design and construction, combined with an intense zombie character, gave more weight to the experience than similar incarnations of it from other companies.
Shortcomings
More so than in most escape games, zombie-tag games can fall victim to lack of consequences. Locked in a Room with a Zombie was no exception. “Bitten” or tagged players had to stand on an X around the edge of the room for 2 minutes until the gamemaster gave them a silly task to perform to free themselves. We could keep getting tagged over and over knowing that the penalty was minimal. Given the intensity of the zombie and set, this lack of consequences betrayed the overall feel that Locked-Up Escape Games created.
As the zombie’s chain reached further into the room, active players struggled for safe space because the timeout Xs for “bitten” players were in the protected areas around the edges of the room.
Given the running and jumping byproduct of escaping a zombie, there were two safety hazards in Locked in a Room with a Zombie. We’d recommend removing the rolling chair and large, hinged objects, liable to swing out into open space without warning. This would protect both players and zombies.
There was a tech-driven puzzle that had sensor tolerances that were far too narrow given the jitteriness and rapid pacing of Locked in a Room with a Zombie. We thought it was broken.
We solved the door puzzle halfway through the game. Our gamemaster handled it well and allowed us to stay and complete the unsolved puzzles. We recommend, however, that Locked-Up Escape Games restrict this final puzzle such that players can’t solve it before completing more of the experience.
Should I play Locked-Up Escape Games’ Locked in a Room with a Zombie?
Locked in a Room with a Zombie was an energetic game for agile players. While you can hug the wall and enjoy solving the puzzles, you’ll have more fun if you are able and willing to risk crossing paths with the zombie.
That said, the game was no joke and there was an interesting puzzle in how to navigate the zombie. That was a layer of puzzling that most escape rooms don’t have, which could be a fun challenge for the less zombie-enthusiastic player.
Despite the zombie character, and the foreboding set, the escape room was not overly terrifying. It would be approachable for most audiences.
If you’ve played Room Escape Adventures’ Trapped in a Room with a Zombie or Still Hungry, you’ll recognize the premise and the game mechanics. In their Locked in a Room with a Zombie, Locked-Up Escape Games designed a less silly, more intense approach to zombie room escaping and they delivered.
Book your hour with Locked-Up Escape Games’ Locked in a Room with a Zombie, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.
Full disclosure: Locked-Up Escape Games comped our tickets for this game.
The next Room Escape Conference is taking place in Niagara Falls, NY from May 1-3, 2017. The conference organizers sponsored our trip to Buffalo, New York, Niagara Falls, New York, and Niagara Falls, Ontario, to play this game and others in the region. We strive to help conference attendees visit the room escapes that are best for them.
