Category: Clue Carré

Clue Carré – The Carnival Heist [Review]

by David Spira, posted in Clue Carré, Louisiana, New Orleans, Reviews

The second most fun you can have in a coat closet.

Location: New Orleans, LA

Date Played: June 22, 2018

Team size: 2-8; we recommend 4-6

Duration: 60 minutes

Price: $28 per ticket

Ticketing: Public

REA Reaction

The Carnival Heist was a split-team escape room with an unusual twist. We’re torn between deeply enjoying a lot of what Clue Carré created and feeling frustrated by some of the design decisions that made it interesting.

The Carnival Heist offered interesting puzzles. Bring the right team for a communication-heavy escape room and be mindful that if something appears off, that might be by design.

If you’re in the area and looking for something that plays a bit differently, there is a crown here just waiting for you to steal it.

In-game: A purple walled art gallery with Mardi Gras paintings hung from the walls. In the middle of the room encased in glass is a crown on a pedestal.

Who is this for?

  • Puzzle lovers
  • Players with at least some experience
  • Players who don’t need to be a part of every puzzle

Why play?

  • Unusual take on split-team escape rooms
  • Interesting set of puzzles
  • Fun final sequence

Story

The priceless King’s Crown was on display at the Vieux Carré Art Gallery during Carnival. With a one hour gap in the viewing schedule, our crew needed to sneak into the gallery and steal the work of art.

In-game: an employee breakroom with a locker, schedule, calendar, and a clock in/out machine.

Setting

The Carnival Heist had a split start whereby half of the group entered the art gallery’s employee break room and the other half entered the coat check room. We eventually converged into the gallery itself.

The break room looked like a break room and the coat check looked like a coat closet. They weren’t overwhelmingly impressive locations, but they did look right. The gallery was a bit more impressive, merging the art gallery aesthetic with a Mardi Gras color palette.

In-game: a coat check closet.

Gameplay

Clue Carré’s The Carnival Heist was a split-team escape room with a moderate level of difficulty.

Core gameplay revolved around communication, deduction, and puzzling.

Analysis

+ The Carnival Heist offered serious deduction and logic challenges.

+ We enjoyed the repurposing of a small device for a fun reveal.

– One group encountered an order preservation puzzle, which was a problem because we didn’t know until it was too late.

+/- The coat check and break room looked fine and reasonably accurate, but they weren’t exciting locations.

+ When we entered the two different spaces, each team was presented with an interesting mini escape room with unique goals.

– We eventually stalled forward progress due to an unusual split-team implementation. While we intellectually appreciate this unorthodox structure, we didn’t enjoy it in the moment. It was clued – and really hammered in – but especially difficult to interpret in the moment. Once we misunderstood the intent, there was no way to self-correct without gamemaster intervention. This plagued the different groups for a good portion of the split-team part of the experience.

? We liked the idea that once one group entered the gallery, they could quickly let the other group in as well. However, in the moment, we didn’t realize we had this capability. It didn’t matter for us, but we suggest additional cluing in the event that one team is far behind the other.

+ The gallery reveals upped the energy level in the room.

+ We enjoyed the Indiana Jones-like conclusion.

Tips for Visiting

  • We recommend Victory for post-game cocktails.

Book your hour with Clue Carré’s The Carnival Heist, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: Clue Carré comped our tickets for this game.

Clue Carré – The Voodoo Room [Review]

by David Spira, posted in Closed Game, Clue Carré, Louisiana, New Orleans, Reviews

No players were cursed in making this review.

Location: New Orleans, LA

Date played: October 8, 2017

Team size: up to 10; we recommend 3-5

Duration: 60 minutes

Price: $28 per ticket

Story & setting

Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau left a trail of puzzles to her last bottle of love potion. Could we retrieve it before the curse she left upon her home took effect?

In-game: A livingroom space with two chairs, a small table with a light, and red walls with many pictures hung from it.

The Voodoo Room was aesthetically cohesive and minimally designed. It had a clear and coherent art direction with few set pieces, many wall hangings, and a lot of open space (relative to the game’s size).

The escape room began approachably and got a touch more grim in the second act. It was just barely spooky, so no need to worry about horror.

Puzzles

The puzzles in The Voodoo Room required meticulous observation and careful searching. We needed to notice oddities, patterns, and connections between various set decor and props.

Standouts

The puzzles in The Voodoo Room flowed one to the next. We connected elements, opened locks, and uncovered more intriguing props. The gameplay worked well and would be accessible and unintimidating to newer players.

In-game: A feathery tophat resting on a bookcase. A glowing red lamp in the background.

One set piece flipped the tone of the space midway though the escape room. It was detailed and just a bit eerie. It made the set that much more exciting.

The final puzzle sequence in The Voodoo Room was superb. It felt magical, as love potions generally do.

Shortcomings

The Voodoo Room was an older escape room and much of the gameplay reflected an older design style. This included some challenging search elements that eventually became tedious time wasters. It also meant that Clue Carré hadn’t built the strongest of connections between puzzles and locks.

There were far too many locks with identical digit structures. We were regularly inputting codes multiple times “just to be certain.”

There was a lot to read in The Voodoo Room. While we didn’t need to hang on every word, we did need to familiarize ourselves with the text. It would be easy to get too caught up in reading and miss all the fun.

The Voodoo Room struggled with lighting and ambiance. Clue Carré could develop a more magical and pointed lighting strategy to eliminate that dimness of voodoo-meets-puzzling environment. (Considering that Clue Carré will be replacing The Voodoo Room in a few months, we don’t recommend that they invest in this idea for this particular room escape, at this point.)

Should I play Clue Carré ‘s The Voodoo Room?

The Voodoo Room was a solid beginner-friendly experience with a few nuggets of unusual innovation that would appeal to experienced players.

The Voodoo Room was one of Clue Carré’s first escape rooms and it has been operating for about 3 years. If you played this a couple years back and feel like this review is more positive than what you saw, that’s because Clue Carré overhauled The Voodoo Room a while back and it plays a lot better than it once did. We had friends shadowing us who had played the original and they were pleasantly surprised with how far The Voodoo Room has come.

If you’re looking for something approachable and locally themed to get started with escape rooms, The Voodoo Room is a great choice. If you’re looking for something special, give Clue Carré’s French Quarter House of Curiosities a shot. Regardless of your selection, there’s good puzzling to be had.

Book your hour with Clue Carré’s The Voodoo Room, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Full disclosure: Clue Carré comped our tickets for this game.

Clue Carré – French Quarter House of Curiosities [Review]

by Lisa Spira, posted in Clue Carré, Louisiana, New Orleans, Reviews

Dat dollhouse.

Location: New Orleans, LA

Date played: October 8, 2017

Team size: up to 7; we recommend 4-5

Duration: 60 minutes

Price: $28 per ticket

Story & setting

After arriving in the French Quarter, we went to meet our friend Selma, the clerk at the local House of Curiosities shop. We found the door unlocked and our dear friend missing. Could we explore the odd store and solve the mystery of the missing Selma?

In-game: An assortment of globes, scientific diagrams, minerals, and tiny objects in the house of curiosities.

French Quarter House of Curiosities had an intricate set filled with little details and an eclectic assortment of objects, most of which factored into gameplay. Every shelf and display featured something new and different to look at. It was a charming, convincing, and entertaining environment.

Puzzles

French Quarter House of Curiosities included some phenomenal and amusing teamwork puzzles. It also included detail-orientated observational challenges and some good old-fashioned deduction.

The puzzles flowed well.

Standouts

We loved many of the puzzles in French Quarter House of Curiosities. These required teamwork and took place in large spaces, or across spaces, such that they were accessible to multiple players. It worked well.

In-game: the interior of an elaborate dollhouse.

The puzzles in French Quarter House of Curiosities were humorous. On multiple occasions, we found ourselves chuckling as we read clues, spotted Easter eggs, or solved puzzles.

Clue Carré added a lot of detail to the set. This made it all the more intriguing to explore. It was a random but beautiful aesthetic that worked.

So many of the puzzles felt especially satisfying to solve and they flowed well from one to the next.

Shortcomings

The gamespace felt uneven. While parts were meticulously designed, other areas felt much more plain. We would have loved to see the aesthetic permeate every corner and nook of the room escape.

While many of the props and set pieces helped tell a story, at times French Quarter House of Curiosities reverted to more random escape-roomy puzzles, where items connected for the sake of connection and didn’t really make sense in a larger narrative.

Should I play Clue Carré’s French Quarter House of Curiosities?

French Quarter House of Curiosities was fun, locally-themed group entertainment.

With an interesting set and strong puzzle flow, it will be approachable and entertaining for newbies, but not boring or basic for more experienced players.

Clue Carré was one of the earliest escape room companies in the United States. As the industry grows and evolves, they are progressing with it. French Quarter House of Curiosities excels in places where their earlier escape rooms struggled. It’s exciting to see this early entrant continually adapt.

Bring your curiosity to New Orleans’ French Quarter.

Book your hour with Clue Carré’s French Quarter House of Curiosities, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Full disclosure: Clue Carré comped our tickets for this game.