Room Escape Artist

Suck it up 👻

Location: Zoersel, Belgium

Date Played: April 14, 2026

Team Size: 2-6; we recommend 2-4

Duration: 120 min + 30 min run-out

Price: €295 per team for Dark Mode, plus an additional €55 per player over 4 players

Ticketing: Private

Accessibility Consideration: All players must climb steep stairs, and at least one player must crawl and climb a ladder

Emergency Exit Rating: [A] Push To Exit

Physical Restraints: [A+] No Physical Restraints

REA Reaction

Many escape rooms bring beloved cinematic worlds to life. Monster Mashers took this approach to the next level, redefining the bounds of an escape room with perhaps the coolest cold opening of all time. Moments in, my teammates and I were viscerally giddy, and with surprise after surprise, Monster Mashers maintained this elevated energy for an impressively long time.

Monster Mashers played by its own rules in creating an experience that was as delightful as it was impressive. It easily checked all the boxes for a world-class escape room: sprawling and detailed set design, a surplus of magical effects, amazing acting, and impeccable flow. Yet above all, it was wildly ambitious in optimizing for fun.

Paying tribute to the likes of Ghostbusters and Scooby Doo, Monster Mashers straddled the line between horror and humor. This tonal mashup was truly a match made in heaven. The scares — of which there were many, at least in Dark Mode — had a cheeky, cartoonish vibe, consistently balancing screams and giggles. Monster Mashers showed how humor can actively enhance rather than diminish the impact of horror.

Monster Mashers offers two versions: Dark Mode and Light Mode, which occur during nighttime and daytime respectively. As such, many fewer slots of Dark Mode are available. While the core gameplay and experiential flow are mostly identical across both versions, Dark Mode features a wider range of scary denizens and playful jump scares, and actual darkness sets the most effective stage for this unique experience. We very highly recommend playing Dark Mode if possible — even for players with a relatively lower horror tolerance.

With their previous experience, Toy Factory, Tales of Torchdale demonstrated a distinctive approach to worldbuilding, an immaculate attention to detail and texture, and a captivating tone. Monster Mashers pushed all these strengths even further, creating an unforgettable world that is worth traveling from any distance to experience.

Who is this for?

• Adventure seekers
• Story seekers
• Scenery snobs
• Best for players with at least some experience
• Fans of Ghostbusters or Scooby Doo

Why play?

• A unique opening
• Detailed, expansive sets
• An entertaining balance of humor and horror

Story

The Monster Mashers are tasked with, well, mashing monsters. And as it turns out, there are all sorts of monsters in the world around us, ranging from impish little creatures that are nearly harmless to some more… um…. let’s not talk about that.

Setting

Monster Mashers took us to an abandoned arcade where some monsters had recently been spotted. Across a range of environments, there was a high level of detail and realism.

Gameplay

Tales of Torchdale’s Monster Mashers was a cinematic adventure with a moderate level of difficulty.

Core gameplay revolved around making connections, solving puzzles, playing games, and interacting with characters.

Analysis

➕/❓ The opening act of Monster Mashers was legendary. Bursting with zany, frenetic energy, this sequence took advantage of the environment in a truly unique manner. It utilized thematic spotlighting to direct our attention and cast the world through a heightened cinematic lens. As far as we could tell, Tales of Torchdale took reasonable precautions to ensure that this scene kept us on the edge of our seats while actually being as safe as possible, but your mileage may vary. (See the note in Tips For Visiting.)

➕ Dark Mode was actively scary, yet the cartoon-horror style — like that of the monsters you’d find in a Scooby Doo episode — kept the entire experience fun, funny, and quite approachable, even for non-horror fans. If you are able to book Dark Mode, we very strongly recommend it.

➕ The cast of characters we encountered throughout Monster Mashers brought the world to life and demonstrated a full commitment to their roles. Monster Mashers excelled as a work of interactive, immersive theater, and its tone was different from any other horror escape room we’ve experienced.

➕ Monster Mashers featured a remarkable level of detail, realism, creativity, and technical craft across a wide range of environments. With a well-defined yet porous magic circle, we were seamlessly transported into the world of Monster Mashers. From outside to in, the set design didn’t feel like set design… it all felt so real.

➕ The lighting and sound design were stellar, with a particular catchy theme song that was stuck in my head for days afterwards.

➕ The gameplay included a wide variety of puzzles, minigames, and thematic tasks. It was tactile, collaborative, and fun.

➖ In amping up the experiential elements, Monster Mashers overall leaned into searching and observation and had less of the more situationally distinctive, layered puzzles that helped make Toy Factory stand out. This was not really a function of difficulty, but rather having a more consistent “why?” behind each puzzle mechanic. In particular, we enjoyed the overall build into our primary objective of the middle act, yet there was an opportunity to deepen the story and characters in more specific ways rather than just yielding useful outputs.

➕ A mid-game cutscene delivered on the theatrics. It was at once spooky, beautiful, and tantalizingly ephemeral.

➕ One of the most magical moments in Monster Mashers was small and subtle, yet immaculately timed and psychologically impactful.

➕/➖ We met multiple interpretations of “monsters” throughout Monster Mashers. Some were barely more than pesky rats, while others were more sinister. We enjoyed using a really cool tool for dealing with monsters, though we’d have appreciated even more opportunities to interact with it, perhaps with a more incremental escalation in monster encounters.

➕ A breathtaking effect pulled us into an iconic new environment, evoking a palpable increase in energy and intensity.

➕/❓ Dark Mode took advantage of full darkness to create a frenzy of silly scares. While a fairly simple puzzle was well designed around this flow, I question whether in Light Mode this segment would land as strongly without the scares.

➖ Compared to the high energy that defined so much of the experience, the final boss battle somewhat wimped out. It was well-produced in its chosen medium, but it fell flat compared to the dimensionality of many previous scenes. It offered a satisfying emotional conclusion to the narrative and a meaningful choice, yet one branch could have involved more active interactions. By concocting such ridiculously high highs early on in Monster Mashers, Tales of Torchdale set themselves up to have a hard time matching this energy on the other end… and indeed the experience never quite found a proportional final crescendo.

➕ Monster Mashers offered great merch, with an in-game opportunity to earn some keepsakes and eye-catching t-shirt options available for purchase afterwards. I appreciated a tasteful tribute to the memorable swag presentation in Dream Labs’ The Tale of the Heartless Pirate.

➕ Tales of Torchdale’s modeled an exceptional approach to post-game team photos, with an attractive background, thoughtful lighting, and a well-designed photo frame.

Tips For Visiting

• Review our tips for playing escape rooms with actors.

Book your hour with Tales of Torchdale’s Monster Mashers, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.