Room Escape Artist

This fall we brought 36 escape room players to the Bay Area to play the most renowned escape games in the region for our fall Tour, Escape Immerse Explore Bay Area.

After the Tour ended, we sent the players a survey that asked them to stack rank every game they played, and here are the results.

Due to the constraints of the region (distance between companies, length of games), this was one of our smaller tours. That said, 80% of the Tour players responded to the survey, and which gives us a lot of data on favorite games in the region.

For additional escape room recommendations in the Bay Area, check out our San Francisco Recommendations Guide and our San Jose Recommendation Guide.

Top 5 Escape Rooms By Ranking

• Ghost Patrol (Trivium)
• Undercooked (Omescape Sunnyvale)
• Robotopia (Omescape Sunnyvale)
• The Attraction Escape Room (Palace Games)
• The Edison Escape Room (Palace Games)

This is the order that these games placed in the weighted ranking, based on each individual’s stack ranking, but the top 5 were so close (with significant drop off below that) that we’ve listed them with bullets rather than numbers. These were exactly the games we expected to see in the top 5.

This is an unusual case where the top ranked game was not officially on the Tour, but we strongly encouraged everyone to visit it (and almost everyone did). Ghost Patrol is a top tier game, and the only reason it wasn’t officially on the Tour is that it is the only game at Trivium, which is a logistical impossibility for an Escape Immerse Explore Tour. We eagerly await more games from Trivium.

Each featured Tour company, Omescape Sunnyvale and Palace Games, had two games that ranked in the top 5.

Most #1 Rankings

It was practically a three-way tie for the most rankings as #1.

Undercooked edged out the other games with the most rankings as #1 (8 rankings).

However, The Attraction and Ghost Patrol came in right behind with almost as many rankings as #1 (7 rankings each).

These rankings tell us that the players on this tour appreciated puzzles a lot. All three of these games are puzzle-dense games, with really well-clued, expert puzzle flow. Undercooked is a delightful, cooking-themed puzzle frenzy!

Reactions from Tour Attendees

“Ghost Patrol… showed me the best version of what I first came to know as an escape room. I was given a charming and purposeful story, a meticulously designed set on a human scale, a thoughtful flow which I couldn’t be anything but entwined in, and most of all, truly creative and multilayered puzzles. Every moment of the experience was not only additive to what preceded it, but multiplicative. I’m reminded why I dedicate so much of my life to this world, and I find myself appreciating what I’ve learned to take for granted here.”

“I loved the gameplay mechanics of Undercooked. Each puzzle was unique but still had a clear, predictable, structured objective. I always knew what I was supposed to be doing, even if the specifics still required some extra noodling (*heehee, kitchen humor …).”

“I absolutely loved the story at The Attraction. It was very different from anything else I’ve ever seen in an escape room, and felt very original and cinematic.”

Taking Risks

With each Tour, we take some risks with game selection and schedule design, because we think there’s value in showcasing a variety of experiences.

A Competitive Game

We chose to include Midnight in Hong Kong at Omescape, which is a competitive game where players are split into 2 teams. This game has a hard minimum of 6 players (3 per team), which makes it especially difficult for traveling players to experience. The Tour was an opportunity to try out this innovative format.

Many attendees felt strongly opposed to it, and it ranked pretty far down the list, for this reason. Here are a few reactions:

“I personally didn’t care for the competition element between the two teams. It felt like we were missing half the game.”

“The head-to-head system in Midnight in Hong Kong was unfair und unbalanced in its second half. It made me not want to do competitive rooms in the future.”

“I wanted to explore the set so much more than I did because the nature of the competitive gameplay and flow didn’t allow for a single moment to not be productive in this game. I hate leaving a game and there is no way for me to have fully grasped everything that happened or was missed….and my team won!”

But as with most experiences on Tours, this feeling wasn’t unanimous.

“In Midnight in Hong Kong, the way they handled head-to-head competition was brilliant. Having the same puzzles in the same space, just different iterations of it was very cool and also nerve racking.”

Long Games, Long Days

We also took risks fitting all of these games into only 3 days. This was a more challenging game lineup than we have on other Tours. The players felt this. Many attendees noted that playing late in the day (especially at Palace Games) negatively impacted their experience in some of these long, puzzle-dense games.

That said, the puzzley nature of San Francisco clearly resonated with this group, as seen by the high ranking of Undercooked. One attendee wrote, “I think the overall characteristic of the San Francisco scene is puzzley games, and that this is probably my favorite batch of games of the 4 EIE Tours I’ve participated, in for that reason.”

More Than Just Puzzles

While there is a trend of long, puzzle-dense, games in his region, and those were the clear favorites of the Tour, as seen in the Top 5 by ranking above, Escape Immerse Explore Bay Area showcased a lot of variety, and attendees appreciated it.

Omescape’s newest game, Haunting at Haruka High, departed from their previous design style:

“Haunting at Haruka High was the surprise of the trip for me. I really enjoyed the atmosphere created. I thought the mix of narration/ story moments to puzzles/ activities was really well done.”

Playing the full catalogue at Palace Games showcased their growth as a company:

“Houdini had an enjoyable game flow that encouraged a larger group to divide in conquer in a good way, where it was easy to go over later what others had missed. The big difference between their first two games and their last two games is they changed their design philosophy. You were no longer interacting with individual puzzle modules in the rooms, but interacting with the rooms to solve puzzles. There was a video game quality to both of the latter games that I truly enjoyed.”

In addition to Ghost Patrol at Trivium, we also recommended attendees visit Off the Couch in Fremont and play their lineup of 3 games (chapters) in a longer storyline. These games also impressed:

“Off the Couch’s games impressed me with just how different the game/ storyline possibilities were from any escape room I’d ever done before. The “save file” concept blew my mind with how it affects endings.”

Our Next Destinations

Tickets are on sale now for two spring Tours!

Escape Immerse Explore Time & Space

Escape Immerse Explore Time & Space will be our first spring Tour in 2025.

• There are two sessions taking place in late April, 2025.
• Session 1 is Sunday-Tuesday (April 27th-29th)
• Session 2 is Tuesday-Thursday (April 29th-May 1st)
• This is a new Tour destination.

Escape Immerse Explore Montreal

Escape Immerse Explore Montreal will be our second spring Tour in 2025.

• There are two sessions taking place in early June, 2025.
• Session 1 is Sunday-Tuesday (June 1st-3rd) SOLD OUT
• Session 2 is also Sunday-Tuesday (June 8th-10th)
• This is our third Tour to this destination.