Room Escape Artist

Apophis is one of the best escape rooms in Barcelona. Here are our recommendations for other great escape rooms in Barcelona, Spain.

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Location: Terrassa, Spain

Date Played: July 7, 2025

Team Size: 2-7; we recommend 3-4

Duration: 90 minutes

Price:  €20-35 per player

Ticketing: Private

Accessibility Consideration: All players must climb and crawl

Mess Meter:  🧹🧹 (out of 5)

Emergency Exit Rating: [A] Push To Exit

Physical Restraints: [A+] No Physical Restraints

REA Reaction

In a regional market filled with cinematic spectacle and daring actor interactions, Apophis was unabashedly focused on puzzles.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the blockbuster epics that dominate enthusiasts’ must-play lists for Barcelona. But after playing enough thrillers and starting to become somewhat desensitized to horror, it was a refreshing palette cleanser to encounter an escape room that optimized for satisfying ahas, while still offering a healthy dose of story, adventure, and discovery.

Apophis made a lot with a little, providing a decent amount of detail where it mattered, and notably using various off-the-shelf tools and props in some genuinely creative puzzles. It was scrappy and clever. Apophis unfortunately also felt a bit older and more dated than need be due to significant wear on certain props and sets. As Vortex Escapes is preparing to open their second game at this location, I hope they’ll also take the time to freshen up Apophis, allowing this star to shine as brightly as it deserves.

While The City Escape Room’s La Taberna (which Vortex Escapes also worked on) provides a strong reason to travel 45 minutes north of Barcelona to Terrassa, Apophis, as well as the nearby Project Omega, both offer an equally strong reason to stick around in Terrassa for the day.

Who is this for?

• Puzzle lovers
• Space fans
• Any experience level

Why play?

• A plethora of puzzle ahas
• Creative uses of scientific toys
• Unexpected transitions

Story

The asteroid “Apophis” was hurdling toward Earth, and Dr. Xetrov had mysteriously disappeared. It was up to us to save the planet and all its inhabitants.

Setting

Apophis was set in Dr. Xetrov’s office and laboratory. The setting was clinical yet functional, filled with fancy university degrees and a range of scientific equipment centered around studying the cosmos.

Gameplay

Vortex Escapes’ Apophis was a standard escape room with a moderate level of difficulty.

Core gameplay revolved around solving puzzles and making connections.

Analysis

➕ Apophis stood out most for its creative puzzle design, particularly in how it utilized various science tools and toys in interesting ways. There was no shortage of satisfying ahas.

➕/➖ The set design made a lot with a little and told a story through contrasting spaces, yet it showed noticeable signs of wear in parts. Not all spaces were created with the same level of detail or polish.

➕ A precision puzzle was perfectly aligned with all elements in the environment. Even the input was cleverly calibrated to compensate for any possible wiggle room in the previous step.

➕ One particularly illuminating solution took advantage of the unusual arrangement of multiple small spaces.

➕/➖ An attractive pair of contraptions were fun to interact with, though finicky to actually control with the required precision.

➖ The doors into a small, enclosed passageway got temporarily jammed as we closed them. While they weren’t locked, they were more rickety than I’d expect for such a pivotal gateway (but thankfully, there was a secondary means of egress.)

➖/➕ As the narrative thread increasingly grew somewhat nebulous, Apophis leaned into a new style of exploration that was enjoyable in a different way. I’m still not completely sure how one segment fit into the story, but I sure had fun.

➕ Apophis altered the ordinary and made it extraordinary. Just when we thought the experience had played all its cards, it unexpectedly excelled in additional dimensions.

➕/➖ A very cool finale led us to form a number of interesting connections, though significant wear and some iffy tolerances held this interaction back from visually popping as clearly as it could have.

Tips For Visiting

• Limited street parking was available nearby.

Book your hour with Vortex Escapes’ Apophis, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.