Room Escape Artist

No players were cursed in making this review.

Location: New Orleans, LA

Date played: October 8, 2017

Team size: up to 10; we recommend 3-5

Duration: 60 minutes

Price: $28 per ticket

Story & setting

Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau left a trail of puzzles to her last bottle of love potion. Could we retrieve it before the curse she left upon her home took effect?

The Voodoo Room was aesthetically cohesive and minimally designed. It had a clear and coherent art direction with few set pieces, many wall hangings, and a lot of open space (relative to the game’s size).

The escape room began approachably and got a touch more grim in the second act. It was just barely spooky, so no need to worry about horror.

Puzzles

The puzzles in The Voodoo Room required meticulous observation and careful searching. We needed to notice oddities, patterns, and connections between various set decor and props.

Standouts

The puzzles in The Voodoo Room flowed one to the next. We connected elements, opened locks, and uncovered more intriguing props. The gameplay worked well and would be accessible and unintimidating to newer players.

One set piece flipped the tone of the space midway though the escape room. It was detailed and just a bit eerie. It made the set that much more exciting.

The final puzzle sequence in The Voodoo Room was superb. It felt magical, as love potions generally do.

Shortcomings

The Voodoo Room was an older escape room and much of the gameplay reflected an older design style. This included some challenging search elements that eventually became tedious time wasters. It also meant that Clue Carré hadn’t built the strongest of connections between puzzles and locks.

There were far too many locks with identical digit structures. We were regularly inputting codes multiple times “just to be certain.”

There was a lot to read in The Voodoo Room. While we didn’t need to hang on every word, we did need to familiarize ourselves with the text. It would be easy to get too caught up in reading and miss all the fun.

The Voodoo Room struggled with lighting and ambiance. Clue Carré could develop a more magical and pointed lighting strategy to eliminate that dimness of voodoo-meets-puzzling environment. (Considering that Clue Carré will be replacing The Voodoo Room in a few months, we don’t recommend that they invest in this idea for this particular room escape, at this point.)

Should I play Clue Carré ‘s The Voodoo Room?

The Voodoo Room was a solid beginner-friendly experience with a few nuggets of unusual innovation that would appeal to experienced players.

The Voodoo Room was one of Clue Carré’s first escape rooms and it has been operating for about 3 years. If you played this a couple years back and feel like this review is more positive than what you saw, that’s because Clue Carré overhauled The Voodoo Room a while back and it plays a lot better than it once did. We had friends shadowing us who had played the original and they were pleasantly surprised with how far The Voodoo Room has come.

If you’re looking for something approachable and locally themed to get started with escape rooms, The Voodoo Room is a great choice. If you’re looking for something special, give Clue Carré’s French Quarter House of Curiosities a shot. Regardless of your selection, there’s good puzzling to be had.

Book your hour with Clue Carré’s The Voodoo Room, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Full disclosure: Clue Carré comped our tickets for this game.