Room Escape Artist

A bazaar game

The Last Wish is one of the best games in the Chicago area. Here are our other recommendations for great escape rooms around Chicago.

Location:  St. Charles, IL

Date Played: October 24, 2024

Team size: 2-10; we recommend 4-5

Duration: 60 minutes

Price: $33 per player

Ticketing: Private

Accessibility Consideration:  at least once player needs to climb a few stairs and crawl into a narrow space; there are also strobe lights

Emergency Exit Rating: [A+] No Lock

Physical Restraints: [A+] No Physical Restraints

REA Reaction

The Last Wish was iPanic Escape Room’s latest game, and it’s a standout for them. The set was exceptionally cool, delivering on a concept that really spoke to the 9-year-old in me that loved watching Aladdin.

Beyond the beautiful setting, the standout feature of The Last Wish was a difficult set of puzzles that managed to remain fair. iPanic offers two difficulty settings, and the hard mode “Forbidden Tour” was worth playing for an experienced escape room crew. It was a well-executed hard mode. That said, please don’t play this mode if you’re a team of escape room newbies… even if you’re smart. Trust me. However, as a team that knew our way around an escape room, we found Forbidden Tour to be a worthy challenge.

For escape room players who love a challenging puzzle set, I highly recommend The Last Wish if you’re in the Chicago area. I’m truly glad that I played this game.

Who is this for?

• Adventure seekers
• Puzzle lovers
• Scenery snobs
• Aladdin fans
• Best for players with at least some experience
• Players who don’t need to be a part of every puzzle

Why play?

• The novel setting and story
• A fun and playful game environment
• Plenty of puzzle content

Story

We had found a Genie’s lamp and started making wishes only to learn that the Genie was quite tricksy. It seemed that we needed to figure out how to use our last wish to escape the Genie.

Setting

The Last Wish was beautifully designed and overflowing with details of an ancient Middle-eastern market, complete with dramatic lighting casting interesting shadows.

iPanic Escape Room’s style is best described as maximalist, and they truly pulled it off in The Last Wish.

Gameplay

We played The Last Wish on “Forbidden Tour” which allegedly has a 10% escape rate, as opposed to the easier “Adventure Tour.”

In Forbidden Tour mode, iPanic Escape Room’s The Last Wish was a standard escape room with a high level of difficulty. Our experienced team had to work for our victory, even if we did it relatively quickly.

Core gameplay revolved around searching, observing, making connections, and puzzling.

Analysis

➕ The Last Wish had a great puzzle set with fun and creative inputs. There were a lot of highlights. Everyone on my 6 person team had a different favorite puzzle.

➖ While the puzzles were good, the inputs were occasionally clunky. We also sometimes didn’t know what triggered as a result of an individual solve.

➖ There was too much unnecessary reading, some computation that felt out of place, and a few monkey props were damaged. These things didn’t harm the puzzles, but they didn’t help the game.

➕ The set was gorgeous and unique, with some rewarding payoffs.

➖ The sound mixing was poor, annoying, and distracting.

❓ I’m not sure why there was a pigmy in the game?

➕ I am generally leery of “hard modes” in escape rooms because they are usually just kind of unfair… but The Last Wish’s “Forbidden Tour” was a well-executed hard mode. It added genuine challenge while still presenting a fair game.

Tips For Visiting

• iPanic has a parking lot.
• There are ample food options within a short drive.

Book your hour with iPanic Escape Room’s The Last Wish, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: iPanic Escape Room provided media discounted tickets for this game.