Room Escape Artist

Election Day is one of the best games in Los Angeles. Here are our other recommendations for great escape rooms in Los Angeles.

A pup-pet project

Location: Newhall, CA

Date Played: September 21, 2025

Team Size: 4-8; we recommend 4-6

Duration: 100 minutes

Price:  $58-79 per player depending on team size and day of week

Ticketing: Private

Accessibility Consideration: Players with color vision deficiency should be Detectives

Emergency Exit Rating: [A] Push To Exit

Physical Restraints: [A+] No Physical Restraints

REA Reaction

I’ve gotta hand it to Appleseed Avenue’s Election Day for actually making politics fun in 2025.

A wondrously bizarre mashup of Sesame Street and CSI, Election Day was blazingly innovative, properly punny, and oh so satisfying. It told a unique and enthralling story that took advantage of the strengths of the escape room medium, translating video game narrative techniques into a physical space with a high level of finesse. I found myself delighted the entire time, both from the game itself and the exciting directions it opens up for the escape room industry more broadly.

Appleseed Avenue is a brand new collaboration between the seasoned creators of two beloved SoCal escape room companies: Arcane Escape Room (The Ghost of Mentryville) and Evil Genius Escape Rooms (Occam’s Apartment, Norcross Art Gallery, The Morgue – now located at Off the Couch in Fremont, CA). I’ve loved the previous games from both these companies, and impressively, both Election Day and the overall Appleseed Avenue concept are a massive leap forward in ambition and polish, while still retaining much of the charm, wit, and personal flavor that made these creators’ earlier experiences so special.

The gameplay in Election Day hit it out of the park, with puzzles that meaningfully delivered narrative. Appleseed Avenue presented an unusually effective and idiosyncratic approach to a split-team flow that gave individual players a sense of identity and purpose. The entire experience ran on a video game engine, demonstrating how screens can be integrated into an escape room in ways that are both justified within the story and also extended with physical interfaces and tactile interactions. Moreover, through all this, we were led to truly care about the world and its inhabitants.

Election Day is an experience worth traveling for, and it’s just the first of multiple stories that will live in the wild world of Appleseed Avenue. Plus, if you haven’t yet played The Ghost of Mentryville at Arcane Escape Rooms, it’s in the same building as Appleseed Avenue. However, given that Election Day is best with a larger team and The Ghost of Mentryville works best with a smaller team, you may want to divide into two groups and flip-flop with another of Arcane’s wonderful escape rooms.

Who is this for?

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

Why play?

• Pioneering puppetry
• Puzzle prowess
• A proliferation of puns

Story

We paid a visit to Puppet Town, specifically to Appleseed Avenue: a unique place where puppets and humans can coexist. While there, we applied — and were hired for — the jobs of detectives and medical researchers. We arrived for our first day of training, which also happened to be the day of Puppet Town’s hotly contested mayoral election.

Setting

Appleseed Avenue was a magical street where humans and puppets could coexist. In addition to the detectives’ and medical researchers’ offices, various other small businesses and homes lined the avenue.

Gameplay

Appleseed Avenue’s Election Day was a structurally innovative escape room with a moderate level of difficulty.

Players were divided into two roles: medical researchers and detectives. Each role had its own dedicated space, though all players could freely move between spaces. Extensive communication and collaboration between roles was required, and each role had its own gameplay style.

Medical researchers focused on more analytical puzzling. This role required reading, following detailed procedures, and interpreting the results.

Detectives focused on collecting and analyzing evidence. This role involved fewer traditional puzzles, instead leaning into narrative-centric deductive puzzling, like what you might find in a murder mystery.

Both roles worked together to fill in Madlibs-esque investigation reports, in a style reminiscent of The Golden Idol games.

Analysis

➕ Appleseed Avenue created a fully realized and fully inhabited world, in which they told an intriguing and remarkably cogent narrative. To any escape room designers questioning how to present a memorable story with dimensional characters and a clear, evolving plot: look no further than Appleseed Avenue’s Election Day.

➕ Election Day promised puppets, and oh boy, did they deliver puppets. As noted on Appleseed Avenue’s website, we encountered 30+ original puppet characters throughout the game, each of which featured an impressive level of craftsmanship. These puppets appeared in a range of formats, with a mix of live puppetry, pre-recorded video segments, photographs on posters, and more. Although we only encountered a few puppets in their “live” form, a high level of interactivity with these characters immediately brought the rest of the world’s inhabitants to life.

➖ There was an opportunity to play with even more puppet-sized props to reinforce that we were visiting a shared puppet-human world. Where did the puppets sit? How did they reach higher surfaces? Could they use human-sized tools? That said, that narrative was never unclear, the world was abundantly puppet-y as is, and I can appreciate prioritizing gameplay and human functionality.

➕ Above all else, Election Day was absolutely hilarious. I’m not sure if I’ve encountered an escape room with more puns (perhaps giving The Keeper & the Fungus Among Us a run for its money… what’s with the pairing of puppets and puns?!) It was clear that the creators had mountains of fun creating this game, and they infused their joy into every single element.

➕ The set design was playful, detailed, and polished. While much of the space was designed around the events of Election Day, the world also extended further, leaving room for future adventures without creating any red herrings.

➕/➖ I loved an early-game musical number, and the sound design throughout the experience was top notch. However, there were occasional moments when the sound effect from solving a puzzle overlapped with a video cut scene, making it hard to hear either for a brief moment.

➕/❓ Election Day‘s gameplay was innovative on so many levels. The puzzle design was layered, introducing a set of core mechanics that each had a clear narrative function, and then presenting new submechanics and variations as the game progressed. An explicit training level taught us how the game wanted to be played, in a style reminiscent of a video game but divided across both digital and physical interfaces. Given that Election Day was running on a video game engine, I wonder whether there’s an opportunity to explore an adaptive content model that enables high-performing teams to fill more of the 100-minute clock? (Our team had a full and satisfying experience, though with plenty of time to spare.)

➕/➖ Appleseed Avenue designed a thoughtful split-team dynamic which balanced frequent collaboration with a bit of playful competition. Even as we were all working toward the same goals, there was space for silly shenanigans and department pride. Each role tackled the same cases from different angles, and our respective discoveries reinforced each other. Our primary control interfaces were transparent in communicating when one side got ahead of the other, so instead of silently keeping half the group waiting, we could go help our teammates. It was impossible to move ahead without solutions from both departments. In just a few instances, there was too much redundancy between what each side learned, leading to a hard-earned discovery feeling somewhat unnecessary.

❓ There’s a potential for replayability in order to fully see the other role’s gameplay, though you’d have to hold back from spoiling the story for any teammates playing for their first time.

➕ While we spent much of Election Day partially divided, the final scene united us in a satisfying resolution of both narrative and puzzle threads, while also pulling on our established learnings of how Appleseed Avenue’s unique world operated. Although we may have cut it close, we saw some serious emotional stakes pay off in a big way.

Tips For Visiting

• There was a parking lot.
• Arcane Escape Rooms is located in the same building as Appleseed Avenue.
• We recommend Persian Grill & Cafe for stellar and affordable dining with a range of dietary options, located in the same complex as Arcane Escape Rooms.

Book your session with Appleseed Avenue’s Election Day, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: Appleseed Avenue provided a complimentary game.