Room Escape Artist

404: Booking Not Found

Location: Clichy, France

Date Played: March 13, 2026

Team Size: 2-4; we recommend 2

Duration: 180 minutes

Price: €280 per team

Ticketing: Private

Accessibility Consideration: All players must climb, crawl, and navigate extremely narrow spaces extensively. This experience is not accessible to players with any mobility issues or who are claustrophobic.

Emergency Exit Rating: We were unsure of emergency exits and safety at multiple points throughout the experience.

REA Reaction

Artifact Escape Game was the ultimate enthusiast passion project. Created by a family of escape room fans and run for the public in their free time, this sprawling transformation of a personal home was the evolution of a childhood “blanket fort” taken to an impressive extreme.

My team played Prime Artifact and 404 back-to-back as an interconnected saga, spanning around five hours of complete immersion in the world Artifact Escape Game had created. While this review focuses primarily on 404, it inherently also reflects the effects of the combined experience. Lisa and David played only Prime Artifact and separately reviewed that as a standalone game.

404 felt like a piece of escape room fan fiction — a patchwork of homages to favorite film tropes, personal childhood memories, and escape room highlights. Clocking in at three hours, there was a fairly clear narrative through-line and a cute recurring character, though many scenes would have benefited from tighter editing.

The gameplay was a mixed bag; some puzzles were fun and clear, while others were more tedious or convoluted by an excess of written instructions. At its finest, the experience reflected the strengths and personalities of all the members of the family who’d contributed to it: mechanical engineering, set design, programming, artwork, performance, and hospitality. 404 experimented in so many different directions, and these risks were interesting even when they didn’t always pay off.

Especially for non-French players, 404 suffers from a particular hype resulting from being infamously difficult to book (securing the single weekly slot requires a watchful eye on Instagram alerts, last-minute flexibility, and plenty of luck) as well as a lofty TERPECA debut in 2025 that was enough to turn heads. If you don’t live in Paris, you can’t really plan ahead, and going wildly out of your way to play 404 may create unreasonable expectations. While there was plenty to admire in this game, many elements didn’t match the level of professionalism or polish that escape room enthusiasts have come to expect from a game of this perceived caliber. Furthermore, the construction and operation of the game posed some severe safety concerns.

On one hand, I unequivocally applaud enthusiast creations like this. One of the strengths of the still nascent escape room medium is the ability for anyone to manifest their fantasy worlds and share them with others. An experience like 404 is leaps and bounds more ambitious than most enthusiasts could ever dream of actually creating themselves.

On the other hand, when an escape room like 404 operates like an indie theme park, with potentially dangerous physical obstacles, heavy-duty moving components, and a labyrinth of enclosed spaces, all offered to the public for a profit, the experience must be held to the same standards of safety as any other escape room business. It was evident that the creators of 404 had considered certain safety measures, but I do not believe they would be sufficient in the case of an emergency. While I didn’t experience any such issues personally, another REA writer’s visit to 404 went terribly awry when the control network went down yet the game’s power remained on, meaning that doors held shut by maglocks and actuators remained locked. With no overrides or emergency exits, they remained trapped in the depths of the game for nearly 20 minutes with no contact until a gamemaster was finally able to reach them. While it would be possible to cut power to a maglock, doors should never be held shut by a powered actuator, particularly when that’s the sole means of egress from a space.

I loved the quirky, ridiculous, silly, chaotic nature to Prime Artifact and 404, and I genuinely want to see more escape rooms lean into the experimental and impractical and attempt to tell new, ambitious stories. There were many unique “are we really doing this?” moments from the saga that brought me great joy and which I will never forget. Yet above all, I am concerned about the safety of what Artifact Escape Game has created, and I worry that this well-intentioned and wildly imaginative experience could become a death trap.

Who is this for?

• Adventure seekers
• Story seekers
• Sci-fi fans
• Best for players with at least some experience

Why play?

• A vast and varied adventure
• A passionate enthusiast creation

Story

After retrieving a powerful energy source in Prime Artifact, things went wrong and we had to prevent the artifact from falling into the wrong hands.

Setting

404 spanned a variety of settings, ranging from sci-fi and cyberpunk to some more cozy and welcoming environments from throughout time and space. The set design was eclectic and detailed, assembled from a variety of materials and sources.

Gameplay

Artifact Escape Game’s 404 was a home-brewed escape room with a moderate level of difficulty. For some teams, the length of the experience may increase the difficulty.

Core gameplay revolved around solving puzzles, making connections, communicating, and physical exploration.

Analysis

➕ Artifact Escape Game’s adventures were full of soul. We witnessed this throughout both Prime Artifact and 404. The creators had designed this world not because they needed to or were trying to make some easy money off it, but because they truly cared. Numerous elements were delightfully over-engineered or designed in idiosyncratic ways that reflected the creators’ personalities and passions.

➕ For the rare occasion that teams are able to play Prime Artifact and 404 back-to-back, Artifact Escape Game ensured a seamless transition . The combined experience was greater than the sum of its parts, and it was a joy to get lost in Artifact Escape Game’s expansive world for five hours. In between, we were given just enough time to rest and recenter before getting propelled into the even grander adventure of 404.

➕ 404 was an efficiently expansive world, transforming the backyard and basement of the creators’ personal abode into a fantastical portal of transportive landscapes. The sets were varied, and sharp contrasts between adjacent environments were effective. While the scenic aesthetic was eclectic and distinctly homemade, most scenes were detailed and meticulously crafted.

➕/❓ 404 excelled in its bold, physical transitions. Like in Prime Artifact, all players must be reasonably agile and slender to effectively navigate the environments of 404. There were a few spots that would be quite uncomfortable, or even impossible to traverse, for players over a certain size.

⚠️ While I enjoyed all the creative and exciting ways to navigate the space, I was left wondering about safety. There often were no visible emergency exits, and no clear means of egress from enclosed spaces in the case of mechanical failure. Artifact Escape Game took some well-intentioned safety precautions — temporary barriers to keep players away from moving parts, safety harnesses, seatbelts — but they seemed insufficient in the case of an actual emergency.

➖ Too many puzzles relied on lists of intricate instructions, often presented on screens in the vicinity. This often reflected a lack of intuitive signposting in the puzzles or environment, and it was especially an issue in a few cases where time-sensitive safety protocols were mixed in alongside gameplay instructions.

➕ The gameplay also featured some fun moments. The best puzzles were tactile, collaborative, and well embedded in the environment.

➕ An adorable character served as our hint system throughout the saga. Rather than becoming overly frustrated through some undersignposted puzzles, we were instead delighted to get to interact extra with our new friend.

➖ Although 404 was playable in English, a few translations were unclear or inaccurate. One puzzle would have been unsolvable had we not noticed that an important number was different in the French version of the text. Some detailed instructions were convoluted to parse in English, leading to a multi-layered interaction that may have been easier had we ignored the instructions altogether.

➕ Given 404‘s length, we welcomed a themed break built into the middle of the experience. It was refreshing and nostalgic, without losing momentum or immersion.

➕ A particularly cozy environment featured a high density of personal details and ephemera. This scene housed a number of charming, play-oriented puzzles, including one that paid tribute both to the creator’s childhood and to a beloved puzzle from a top escape room in a nearby region.

➕/➖  We enjoyed a cheeky in-game photo op that added to the story. However, there was an opportunity to upgrade the quality and presentation of the actual team photo that we received after our experience, even just with some added branding around the company name and game title(s).

➖ A late-game scene included finicky tech and an attempt at an action segment that lacked energy and overstayed its welcome.

➕/➖ The finale featured a unique and chaotic interaction that made failure fun. While this offered reasonably climactic closure to Artifact Escape Game’s epic saga, there was perhaps room to push the intensity of this interaction a step further, layering more variations or using forced failure if a team performs too well. The story itself concluded in a less satisfying way. It was difficult to hear, with low audio levels and multiple audio sources playing concurrently. I also wished our team had been fully united when learning what we’d accomplished.

Tips For Visiting

• There is limited parking nearby, but Artifact Escape Game is only a few minutes walk from the Mairie de Clichy metro stop (M13) and also walkable from Porte de Clichy (M14.)
• This game is available in French or English.
• Available bookings are limited, and aren’t announced very far ahead. We recommend following their Instagram to know when bookings become available.