Room Escape Artist

Time to disconnect

Location: Katy, TX

Date Played: July 7, 2025

Team Size: 2-7; we recommend 3-4

Duration: 60 minutes

Price:  $34.99 per player

Ticketing: Private

Accessibility Consideration: All players must climb a few stairs to enter the room. Also, lights flash several times during the game.

Emergency Exit Rating: [A+] No Lock

REA Reaction

Armadillo Escape Room Adventures specializes in that form of escape room with five million locks and part of your job is to sort through when and how to approach them all. Played in Expert Mode, Project Dark Cyber: Permanent Backdoor Shutdown was the epitome of such a pressure cooker experience, cramming these locks into a mobile trailer, dimming the lights, and slowly baking us in the Houston heat. I suspect teams opting for Expert Mode need a near-perfect playthrough to actually escape; there’s little room for head-scratching, and some of the puzzles have a good deal of nuance that can necessitate do-overs. It’s the kind of game you play for the pure challenge of it – not for immersive vibes or interesting set design. All puzzles, all the time, no excuses.

For this particular challenge, players also must accept certain conditions that add to the difficulty in suboptimal ways. For smaller teams, some elements were deemed “out of play,” but they were still present in the room and somewhat distracting. The heat was indeed oppressive (though this would be less of a problem outside of summer). Some intentionally-obscured information was overly difficult to see even when revealed. Some puzzles were time-bound, throttling momentum.

These days, this kind of room probably has a fairly niche audience: experienced players who miss the challenges of the early days. But, for that audience, and with the right expectations, this room is a worthy opponent.

Who is this for?

• Puzzle lovers
• Experienced players
• Players who don’t need to be a part of every puzzle; you WILL have to divide and conquer

Why play?

• This is one of the hardest games in Texas.

Story

Once upon a time, the government installed “backdoors” into all the critical services supported by the internet, giving them access to all the data ever. Upon discovering this horror, we set out to disable these entry points and save the world from Big Brother.

Setting

The fate of the country lay encoded in an unassuming single-wide trailer, bespectacled with metallic trimmings, cold lockboxes, lots of cables, and even more cables. Parking the trailer in the Houston heat was a master stroke by the government, for few people would dare battle the midday sun like we did. Well-played, government, well-played.

Gameplay

Armadillo Escape Room Adventures’ Project Dark Cyber: Permanent Backdoor Shutdown was a standard escape room with a customizable level of difficulty. “Expert Mode” was very difficult, and the company offers two slightly easier modes as well.

Gameplay consisted of making observations and connections as well as managing lots of materials and locks.

Analysis

➕ We appreciated the challenge of this game, delivered in large part through a dense set of complex and interesting puzzles. We were fully occupied from beginning to end.

➖ The dim lighting contributed to the difficulty, but not in a welcome way. The lack of visibility directly impacted at least one puzzle.

➕ The room offered several parallel puzzling paths that were generally well marked to indicate their relationships.

➖ To offer customizable difficulty based on group size, some puzzle tracks were left in the room but explicitly out of play. Despite (mostly) clear labeling, the extra locks were endlessly distracting when taking inventory of our progress. Also, as a small team, we felt a bit of FOMO for the puzzles we weren’t allowed to complete.

➖ Multiple puzzles required us to wait to receive information over long stretches of time. In a room where every second counted, this kind of unavoidable throttling was frustrating and deflating, especially near the endgame.

➕/➖ Presenting this game as a gadget-filled trailer in the lot behind the building felt appropriate for the hacking scenario. However, the climate control was inadequate for a midsummer’s day in Houston.

Tips For Visiting

• Armadillo Escape Room Adventures has two locations. This game is in the Katy branch.
• This company requests that you remain in your car or outside of the business until they call you to allow entry about 5 minutes before your start time. Have a plan for where you’ll hang out if the weather is bad.

Book your hour with Armadillo Escape Room Adventures’ Project Dark Cyber: Permanent Backdoor Shutdown, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

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