Room Escape Artist

Hold my beard

Location: Upland, CA

Date Played: September 18, 2025

Team Size: 3-8; we recommend 3-4

Duration: 60 minutes

Price:  $42-52 per player depending on team size and day of week

Ticketing: Private

Accessibility Consideration: None

Emergency Exit Rating: [A] Push To Exit

Physical Restraints: [A+] No Physical Restraints

REA Reaction

The Trials of Merlin might just be Trapped! Escape Room’s greatest crowd-pleaser yet. With large, beautiful sets, magical effects, and family-friendly gameplay, this was an experience that would make first-time players excited to play more escape rooms and also still entertain enthusiasts.

While “wizard” is a fairly common escape room theme, Trapped put their own personal spin on some of the common tropes. If you’ve always wanted to be wizard, you’ll be delighted to get to make potions, read ancient scrolls, cast spells, and much more.

Trapped’s progression over the years has been impressive. Across their three locations, they’ve consistently leveled up their set design, technical ambitions, and experiential cohesion. The Trials of Merlin reflects all those learnings, as well as an understanding of what style of escape room will draw in new players in 2025.

In some other regards, The Trials of Merlin was also a small step back, at least for more experienced players. While one of my favorite games at Trapped, Pandora’s Box, stood out for its efficient use of space, unique theme, and idiosyncratic layered gameplay, The Trials of Merlin largely went in the opposite direction, crafting a physically larger experience that sometimes underutilized the space available.

If you’re looking to add a little extra magic to your life, The Trials of Merlin will test your wits, creativity, and bravery. Especially for newer players, this is a wondrous experience that you’ll definitely wand to play.

Who is this for?

• Scenery snobs
• Puzzle lovers
• Any experience level
• Aspiring wizards

Why play?

• Accessible gameplay
• Magical effects
• Enchanting set design

Story

We attempted a series of challenges presented by the great wizard Merlin in order to prove our worth and obtain his magical spellbook.

Setting

The Trials of Merlin was set in a wizard’s museum-castle, with old stone walls, rustic wooden furniture, and a bubbling cauldron in the corner.

Gameplay

Trapped’s The Trials of Merlin was a standard escape room with a moderate level of difficulty.

Core gameplay revolved around solving puzzles and making connections.

Analysis

➕ The Trials of Merlin presented a polished take on a classic “wizard” theme, with visually alluring environments and lots of details where they mattered. A potion mixing station and the carvings on a unique door were particularly striking.

➕/➖ While the puzzles were on the lighter side compared to some of Trapped’s previous games, they still included a variety of satisfying interactions and thematic ahas. However, since the experience was largely linear, there were multiple bottlenecks that left some players waiting for their teammates to proceed.

➖ A dedicated lobby for The Trials of Merlin was lightly themed but largely underutilized. An outer layer to the narrative was very quickly abandoned and provided more distraction than value, though I appreciated the attempt at more theatrical framing.

➕ I’m generally skeptical of screens in escape rooms, but Trapped found a way to bring multiple screen-based characters to life in a compelling way. There was an impressive attention to detail in their framing, lighting, synchronization, and lines of sight.

➖ While the sound design overall was top notch throughout the experience, the audio levels of certain live-voiced characters were notably low in every space. We enjoyed the creative presentation and apparent interactivity of these characters; we just wish we could have heard them better.

➕/➖ An unexpected transition featured multiple high-effort magic tricks that we didn’t even realize were magic tricks. One effect would have benefited from some additional proof of the near-impossible. Another needed better sequencing and lighting so that all players were situated in a new space before a special effect occurred.

➖ The lighting on one puzzle was almost fully blocked by players standing in the position needed to solve that puzzle. While this lighting looked nice from a distance, in practice this puzzle became harder to solve in the dark.

➕ A delightful contraption opened an equally delightful door, creatively reinforcing the gameplay style in that scene.

➕/➖ One of the coolest set pieces of the game immediately engaged us, yet only involved up to 2 players at a time. An escalation in tempo was nice in theory but finicky in practice.

➕ Like in some of their previous games, Trapped designed some “adaptive content” into The Trials of Merlin — essentially, bonus puzzles that seamlessly enter into or are hidden from the core experience depending on your team’s progress. This helps to give every team a full experience. These bonus puzzles were well designed, including nice callbacks to earlier gameplay, a magical effect, and some thematic roleplay.

➕/➖ The Trials of Merlin balanced drama and humor throughout, especially so in a culminating solo moment. With entertaining audio, nice effects, cheeky pop culture references, this scene was thoughtfully designed. For the solo player, though, there was an opportunity to provide a view of what their teammates were up to rather than just keep them waiting.

Tips For Visiting

• Trapped! Escape Room has 2 different SoCal locations. The Trials of Merlin is located in their Upland location.
• There was a parking lot.

Book your hour with Trapped! Escape Room’s The Trials of Merlin, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: Trapped! Escape Room’s provided media discounted tickets for this game.