Room Escape Artist

Making the grade

Location: Katy, TX

Date Played: July 7, 2025

Team Size: 2-12; we recommend 4-6

Duration: 60 minutes

Price:  $34.99 per player

Ticketing: Private

Accessibility Consideration: None

Emergency Exit Rating: [A+] No Lock

Physical Restraints: [A+] No Physical Restraints

REA Reaction

Even though this room certainly qualified as one of Armadillo Escape Room Adventures’s room-full-of-locks games, it offered several more interesting ways to input codes than we found in Project Dark Cyber: Permanent Backdoor Shutdown. Some of them were straightforward, others were whimsical, and many we didn’t expect to work from their appearance. However, if Armadillo Escape Room Adventures are anything, it’s reliable, and everything triggered as designed. Regardless of how worn some of the elements appeared, the experience has been well-maintained.

We balked a bit at some of the tasks we had to complete during this room. Their premises were always legit, but we had to repeat some actions over 20 times to yield results. Furthermore, these lengthy and repetitive puzzles didn’t offer intermediate feedback to reinforce our efforts and often veered in the opposite direction, leaving us to question our results. Given the number of these puzzles, this room would be more suitable for larger groups that include some players who need simple tasks to feel useful because, in this situation, they actually would be useful. Despite these complaints, however, this room offered an above average amount of quality puzzling, and we felt accomplished at the end.

It’s worth noting that Armadillo Escape Room Adventures offers two school-themed rooms, one at each of its locations. Large or challenge-minded groups should play this one. Small or speed-focused teams should play Detention: One Last Day of Summer. Both are solid, classic escape rooms for players who enjoy locks over looks.

Who is this for?

• Puzzle lovers
• Any experience level
• Players who don’t need to be a part of every puzzle

Why play?

• To engage teams with mixed experience levels

Story

We overslept on the very last day of the school year, neglecting to submit our final project. If we hoped to pass whatever ambiguous grade we were in, we needed to break into the school after hours and complete our assignment!

Setting

We found ourselves in a school hallway bedecked with lockers and allusions to extracurricular activities.

Gameplay

Armadillo Escape Room Adventures’ School After Hours: The Final Rush was a standard escape room with a customizable level of difficulty. “Expert” was the most challenging level offered for this room, and we found it to be moderately difficult with a team of three experienced players.

Gameplay revolved around making observations and connections and completing basic school tasks. Several of these tasks involved lengthy repeated processes.

Analysis

➕ This was a dense puzzling room with plenty to accomplish.

➕ We appreciated the fair lock mapping in a room with so much to do. We generally knew where to seek clues for certain locks and where to enter information for the clues we found.

➕ The older, worn presentation belied some tech triggers that we truly didn’t expect to do anything. The gameplay has been well-maintained.

➖ Several puzzles had significant room for error without any intermediate feedback mechanisms to keep us on track. Sometimes, the intermediate information even seemed misleading.

❓ We had to earn our hints by finding special codes throughout the experience. Although this seemed well-calibrated for our particular playthrough, it was an unusual source of stress that could potentially leave teams in a lurch.

➖ One puzzle presented multiple options for sequencing information without a clear rationale for which one to choose.

➖ At times it seemed like the room used repetition to customize difficulty, which was tedious and unpleasant.

Tips For Visiting

• Armadillo Escape Room Adventures has two locations. This game is in the Katy branch.
• The Spring location has a different school-themed room, Detention: One Last Day of Summer. Make sure you know which one you’re signing up for. The two rooms are totally different from each other, so only the theme is redundant.
• 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’ School After Hours: The Final Rush, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: Armadillo Escape Room Adventures comped our tickets for this game.