Room Escape Artist

Tomb Pirates!

Location:  Fairfield, NJ

Date Played: December 31, 2024

Team size: up to 10; we recommend 3-4

Duration: 60 minutes

Price: $35-$40 per player

Ticketing: Private

Accessibility Consideration:  None that we could see

Emergency Exit Rating: [A+] No Lock

Physical Restraints: [A+] No Physical Restraints

REA Reaction

Secrets of the Tomb was not the escape room we were envisioning. We did not set foot in Egypt. Rather, we were aboard a pirate ship, plundering treasure… but the ship also looked a bit like a tomb?

This was a themed adventure. While I didn’t believe I was aboard a pirate ship, I did appreciate that decor was appropriately placed to cover lights and tech, and Fairfield Escape Room put effort into theming the props and sets. The atmosphere was fun.

The puzzles in Secrets of the Tomb were well clued and fun to solve. They often led to exciting little reveals. Unfortunately, the tech behind this game wasn’t entirely reliable, leading us to second guess correct answers. This made for less than satisfying gameplay. Additionally, there was opportunity to enhance the flow to avoid bottle necking.

Fairfield Escape Room knows there are opportunities to improve Secrets of the Tomb. They care a lot, and they’ve put extra effort into the aesthetic, and continue to tweak as they can. They’ve learned a lot about what works and doesn’t work by running this game.

While I recommend the smooth game flow of The House on Clinton Road more strongly, if that theme doesn’t vibe with you, there’s still a lot of enjoy in Secrets of the Tomb, and I look forward to returning for their newest game. Just go in understanding that Secrets of the Tomb is a noticeable step down from The House on Clinton Road from a gameplay perspective.

Who is this for?

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

Why play?

• The pirate/ tomb theming?
• Enjoyable puzzles

Story

Our group of adventurers had discovered a shipwreck in a cavernous cove. We were there to plunder the treasure before the rising tide washed it out to sea.

Setting

The main set of Secrets of the Tomb was somewhere between a pirate ship and an ancient tomb. It had a captain’s wheel in the middle, and various barrels and other wooden props around the perimeter of the set… but it also had stone walls and torches. There were a few skeletal pirates as well (thematic and not at all scary). With textured walls and draped cloth, the space felt deeply confused.

Gameplay

Fairfield Escape Room’s Secrets of the Tomb was a standard escape room with a moderate level of difficulty.

Core gameplay revolved around observing, making connections, and solving puzzles.

For us, a lot of the difficulty of Secrets of the Tomb came from tech malfunctions which had us spinning in circles.

Analysis

➕/➖ The vibe was fun, albeit confused. Although the set wasn’t the most realistic, Fairfield Escape Room put in the effort to theme as much of the room as possible, to make it feel pirate ship/ tomb-esque. They had added textures and covered lighting, tech, and anything that would detract from the world. Narratively this all could have worked if it was justified as some kind of space-time paradox.

➖ The atmospheric lighting was fun, but it didn’t always work well with the puzzles. In once instance, we couldn’t differentiate colors clearly enough.

➖ The latter sets were underutilized. There was opportunity for more word-building and collaborative puzzles as we opened up new spaces.

➖ While Fairfield Escape Room themed various purchased props, which we appreciated, these were the least interesting parts of the gameplay.

➕ The puzzles were well clued and solved cleanly. Secrets of the Tomb had some fun layered solutions. We especially enjoyed how one puzzle rolled.

➖ The puzzle flow was choppy. The game ground to a halt when the only available puzzle was a small prop that only one player could interact with at a time.

➕ The puzzles often resolved to fun little reveals throughout the space. Fairfield Escape Room created many little moments throughout the escape game.

➖ We encountered multiple tech failures, where the reveal didn’t trigger. Sometimes we had to do the correct action multiple times to get results. This diminished our trust game. We would start trying bad ideas when we had the correct idea already. This contributed to a feeling of choppy flow.

➖ The game-specific rules for how to interact with a certain type of space were inconsistent.

➕ We appreciated the puns throughout the design.

Tips For Visiting

• Parking: There is plenty of parking in the parking lot.
• Food: We did not stop in, but there is a restaurant, Tortas Lokas, in the same parking lot as Fairfield Escape Rooms. For something else authentically New Jersey, Calandra’s (the bakery and the restaurant) is a 4 minute drive west on route 46.

Book your hour with Fairfield Escape Room’s Secrets of the Tomb, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

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