Room Escape Artist

In June of 2024, we hosted our second Escape Immerse Explore tour to New Mexico. On this escape room tour, we brought 48 escape room enthusiasts to Albuquerque and Santa Fe. 90% of attendees completed the post-event survey, giving us feedback on the event and the escape rooms.

This tour featured 4 escape rooms at New Mexico Escape Room and 4 escape rooms at Bust Out Escape Room, both in Albuquerque, plus a trip to Meow Wolf in Santa Fe. Many attendees also add extra escape games into their schedules.

The survey asked them to stack rank every game they played, and here are the results.

For more in depth escape room recommendations for Albuquerque & Santa Fe, New Mexico, check out this recommendations guide. We’ll be updating it soon once a few more reviews from New Mexico are published.

Top 5 Escape Rooms By Ranking

The favorite games were spread across both the featured companies:

1. Rattlesnake Bend at Bust Out Escape Room
2. Super Secret at New Mexico Escape Room
3. Blackwell Manor at New Mexico Escape Room
4. Escape Jumanji at Bust Out Escape Room
5. Cabin 2.0 at New Mexico Escape Room

With the individual stack rankings, we’re able to assign weights to calculate how each escape room ranked in aggregate.

This top 5 is pretty similar to what we saw in with the post-event survey results from 2022. Rattlesnake Bend took the top spot yet again. Slots 2-4 reordered a bit. And Cabin 2.0, a new game, edged out Bombshell for a space in the top 5.

Surprise 6th Place

Nefertari’s Tomb at New Mexico Escape Room finished 6th in the rankings. It was the only game outside of the top 5 that ranked as someone’s favorite game. In fact, in ranked #1 for 3 people.

This puzzle gauntlet is a polarizing game, as noted in the previous post-event survey results. Again in this year’s survey, players ranked it all over, from high to low, including both first and last.

However, its climb to 6th place was a big change from our previous tour. We attribute this to more flexible tour schedules and better expectation setting. Because New Mexico Escape Rooms had opened 2 new games since 2022, we only scheduled this game as part of the tour for players who noted that they really like hard puzzles. Other players who elected to add it onto their schedules had a good understanding of what to expect.

With its 6th place finish, Nefertari’s Tomb pushed Bombshell down to 7th, but these two scored nearly identically in the calculated rankings.

Rounding Out the Top 10

The other games from New Mexico Escape Room and Bust Out Escape Room rounded out the top 10. While some tour attendees visited other local escape room companies, including Albuquerque Escape Room, Escape in Time, and Escape the Room, and had fun in these games, they weren’t nearly impressive as the games from the companies featured on the tour.

Horror Penalty

In the case of TERPECA, there is often a perception of a horror boost that we have long hypothesized is due to players who dislike horror self-selecting out of playing horror games entirely.

On our Tours, we have created a number of methods to help players enjoy horror games when they would normally skip horror games entirely. This has been a big net gain for everyone, but we do see pretty consistently that these players enjoy the horror games, but not as much as non-horror.

Overall, we’re proud of the fact that we’ve helped a number of players broaden their horizons and start learning to appreciate the joys that can be found within well-crafted scary experiences.

“Best” is Individual

With each tour, we are reminded that “best” isn’t absolute. Favorites are a matter of taste… and also a matter of theme, team, gamemaster, maintenance, and other variables.

• 6 different games ranked as at least one person’s #1.
• 8 different games ranked as at least one person’s #2.
• 12 different games ranked as at least one person’s #3.

While there were clear favorites across the entire group. Individuals have different preferences, and everyone found a lot to love in the games in New Mexico.

Reactions from Tour Attendees

“It was an absolute delight just to exist in Rattlesnake Bend.”

“Loved Super Secret for the delightful story and world created.”

“Blackwell Manor was incredibly beautiful and technically impressive.”

“I really loved playing Jumanji. It was fun and cheeky.”

“Cabin 2.0 was a perfect non-actor horror game that kept the scares frequently, and the puzzles challenging enough that you were forced to push through the fear. I loved it.”

“I loved the puzzles in Nefertari’s Tomb.”

“I found Nefertari’s Tomb extremely frustrating.”

“Bombshell was so incredibly close to being a perfect game. The use of sets, lighting, and sound really immerses you in the story of the mafia family.”

Behind the Scenes

The owners went above and beyond for as hosts for this tour. Everyone enjoyed talking with the owners and seeing behind the scenes. The behind the scenes tour of Blackwell Manor was a highlight for many people.

Our Next Destination

Our next Escape Immerse Explore tour is going to The San Francisco Bay Area.

The San Francisco Bay Area is home to two escape rooms companies with an impressive number of top tier games.

Palace Games set a high bar when they opened The Houdini Escape Room in 2015 and only leveled up from there. Their most recent escape games The Edison and The Attraction are technological marvels. They are unique. You will never have played anything like either of these.

Omescape Sunnyvale offers a variety of experiences from puzzle-focused, to competitive, to whimsical, to actor-driven. With each new escape room, Omescape has crafted a more immersive set and more complete experience. They are one of the oldest escape room companies in the country and a name many escape room players will recognize from the masterful pandemic-era online hit Pursuit of the Assassin Artist.

Tour Dates: Sunday, October 6 – Tuesday, October 8, 2024

There are only 2 tickets left for this tour!