Room Escape Artist

Fall Harvest is one of the best escape rooms in Northern New Jersey. Here are our recommendations for other great escape rooms around Northern New Jersey.

Counting crows

Location: Wharton, NJ

Date Played: July 2, 2026

Team Size: 2-10; we recommend 4-5

Duration: 120 minutes

Price: $59 per player

Ticketing: Private

Accessibility Consideration: All players need to walk up a few steps. At least one players needs to crawl a short distance.

Emergency Exit Rating: [A+] No Lock

Physical Restraints: [A+] No Physical Restraints

REA Reaction

With their 10th escape room, Fall Harvest, 13th Hour Escape Rooms leveled up their signature style to what feels like the pinnacle of this escape room design philosophy.

13th Hour Escape Room builds puzzle-driven gameplay in grim, spooky settings that are heavy on atmosphere but lighter on story. While not all of their games follow this exact formula, most notably the Golden Lock-winning The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, as a company with roots in the haunt industry, this is what they are best known for, and with good reason.

Fall Harvest was their biggest experience to date. The set was huge, with each act unlocking more farm… and surrounding context. The set was meticulously designed and carefully weathered. The big spaces were appropriately filled, such that the world felt lived in. With huge set-based reveals and mind-boggling transformations, 13th Hour outdid themselves on scale.

They also expanded the content. With a 2-hour game clock, there was twice as much to solve, much of it in their signature “count, transform, order” design, often with multiple layers that worked best as collaborative solves. Moreover, many of the puzzles incorporated more creative components than we’ve seen from this company before, which surprised and delighted us. While the tone of the game was grim, the puzzles were playful. And it worked.

This game was challenging not because any individual puzzle was especially hard but because there was a lot to notice. It wasn’t always clear whether we had enough information to solve any puzzle, or which details would be relevant when. At times, it felt like we were pulling on a few too many threads at once, none of which would yield results until far later in the game. Because of this, despite the volume of context, experienced players don’t need a huge team… just an observant and discerning one. Throughout Fall Harvest, we felt that we earned our solves, and they were always satisfying and rewarding.

This was a puzzle solver’s escape room, and while there was a story, with a turn, no less, narrative wasn’t the focus of the experience; the majority of the puzzles didn’t propel the story forward.

For newer players, we recommend starting with a few of 13th Hour’s 1-hour experiences before you tackle Fall Harvest. However, for experienced players making the trek to 13th Hour (which is about an hour west of New York City by car), Fall Harvest is a must-play. If you like 13th Hour Escape Room’s gameplay style and appreciate the vibe of their games, you’ll love this one.

Who is this for?

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

Why play?

• It is packed with an incredibly large variety of puzzles that play with expectations
• Fun reveals and unusual set design choices
• A strong finale

Story

We were asked by a local farmer to help prepare for the Fall Harvest Festival.

Setting

Set on a sprawling farm compound, 13th Hour Escape Room built tall and wide, with their signature grim – but not terrifying – style. While Fall Harvest was ominous, it only drifted into horror aesthetics in the late-game.

This was a beautifully built game that had a number of impressive reveals and made great use of set-based transitions.

Gameplay

13th Hour Escape Room’s Fall Harvest was a standard, puzzle-driven escape room in a big set. It had an above average level of difficulty, due to the volume of puzzles.

Core gameplay revolved around searching, making connections, communicating, and solving puzzles. It was also important to be observant and remember details throughout the length of the 2-hour experience.

Analysis

➕ 13th Hour has a house style, both in puzzle design and aesthetics, and Fall Harvest was peak 13th Hour in both dimensions. In comparison to their earlier games, it offered more of everything.

➕ On the world-building side, the game space opened up, with multiple surprisingly expansive scene changes, each one a fully designed space. Fall Harvest offered a series of reveals, on different scales, that made the space blossom. The biggest one put extra wind in our sails. However, another entire scene was just incredibly extra. I think 13th Hour was simply thinking, “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.”

➕ Fall Harvest offered more puzzles, with it being a longer experience, and also more layered, deeper solves. While puzzles still relied heavily on counting and ordering, the puzzles also included many unusual, creative ahas. More than in their previous rooms, 13th Hour subverted our expectations before landing satisfying solves. Many of the solutions were pretty funny. The puzzle design had leveled up.

➖/❓ It wasn’t always obvious which puzzles were accessible. Even as an experienced team, it was possible to sink a lot of time into a puzzle without having all the information. We did this a few times. I wouldn’t necessarily say this was a bad thing, because becoming intimately familiar with some props, mechanisms, and set pieces early on made for satisfying ahas and quick solves later, but it does mean teams have to be comfortable with some level of frustration. I caution teams to ask for a hint if you find yourself making no progress for a long time. Fall Harvest would also benefit from a singular, obvious first puzzle to make sure all teams get their footing before too long.

➖ Fall Harvest might hold the record for most the most notes we’ve ever had on a single boogie board at one time. We kept cramming more on, because we had multiple deeply layered puzzles open at once, and we didn’t want to erase anything essential… which was the right choice, because eventually we used every note.

❓ The puzzles in Fall Harvest were primarily thematic. With a few exceptions, they didn’t deliver the story beats. Your appreciation for this gameplay will depend on what you value in escape room design.

➕ 13th Hour likes to personalize their experiences whenever they can. With Fall Harvest, they wrote this directly into the story of the game. The design was newsworthy.

➕ The character interaction in Fall Harvest was limited, yet it still added personality and and charm to the experience. It was not creepy, in the way that characters in their Hayden Farm experiences can be.

➖ There were a few opportunities for minor quality of life adjustments, including a reset button on one input mechanism and a more clear “solved” indicator for one large set piece.

➕ The soundtrack was a lot of fun. We were dancing through the entire experience.

➕ The finale was awesome. It delivered on a gigantic tease introduced partway through the game.

🎃 I would describe Fall Harvest as gentle horror. The farmhouse had a dark (mood, not lighting) aesthetic, and the storyline was creepy, but the experience itself was not actively scary. You don’t have to worry about jump scares. However, the last scene took a bit of a more gruesome turn, so I don’t recommend bringing young children or anyone sensitive to haunted house-style gore.

Tips For Visiting

• Go to Building B, Door 11. There is a big parking lot.
• We enjoyed Norte 175 for dinner.

Book your session with 13th Hour Escape Room’s Fall Harvest, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: 13th Hour Escape Room provided a complimentary game.