Category: Escape Chronicles

Escape Chronicles – Testing Facility [Review]

by David Spira, posted in Escape Chronicles, Los Angeles, Reviews

Office Space meets Portal, with a hint of Tiny Toons. 

Location: North Hollywood, CA

Date Played: August 26, 2018

Team size: 2-8; we recommend 4-5

Duration: 60 minutes

Price: $27 per ticket

Ticketing: Public

REA Reaction

Testing Facility was a puzzle-focused escape room that justified the puzzling with a humorous spin. Although the gamespace was not inherently exciting and it lacked adventure, Testing Facility was a phenomenally strong puzzle game with character.

If you’re in Los Angeles and you play escape rooms for the puzzles, we strongly encourage you to test yourself against Testing Facility.

In-game: breakroom with a table, breaker boxes, and a Pepsi machine.

Who is this for?

  • Story seekers
  • Puzzle lovers
  • People who think that an Office Space-meets-Portal mashup is a good idea
  • Any experience level
  • Players who don’t need to be a part of every puzzle

Why play?

  • Humorous AI
  • Many interesting puzzles

Story

We had eagerly accepted Professor Bentham’s experiment and his challenge to outwit his humorously psychotic AI, PAL, and its desire to make us its best friend forever and ever.

PAL’s personality could best be described as Portal’s GLaDOS with the motivation of Tiny Toon’s Elmyra.

In-game: a close up of a CRT monitor with a DOS prompt reading, "breakroom terminal."

Setting

The tests took place in an office-meets-lab environment complete with Despair Demotivation posters. Furniture included a table, a couple of desks, and not much else. The most eye-catching set piece was an old soda vending machine.

Most of the character for Testing Facility came from the voice of the AI, PAL.

In-game: a collection of lockers with a line pattern painted on them and a desk with a CRT monitor.

Gameplay

Escape Chronicles’ Testing Facility was a standard escape room with a moderate level of difficulty.

Core gameplay revolved around puzzling.

In-game: a wide shot of the the break room.

Analysis

+ Testing Facility was funny. The AI taunted us throughout the escape room. It added depth and humor to the bland office setting. This was a perfect example of a game that mixed an office environment with something unexpected and turned a tired escape room theme into something entertaining.

– Humor aside, Testing Facility wasn’t an exciting space to occupy. The blandness of an office didn’t energize our group.

+ Escape Chronicles built a lot of puzzle play into minimal props, and in one instance, into one small item. It was impressive.

+ Escape Chronicles printed custom props for one puzzle. This detail created smooth (red herring free!) entertaining gameplay. Many lesser companies would have just made small modifications to existing materials.

+ Escape Chronicles minded the details, delivering interesting and fun puzzles.

In-game: a desk with a National Geographic magazine beside a coffee mug that reads, "World's Okayest Employee."

+ We enjoyed Escape Chronicles’ approach to reuse. We reused knowledge that we had accumulated over the course of gameplay.

– Testing Facility lacked an impactful finale. We would have liked to see or feel a response to besting the AI. Given the character Escape Chronicles had crafted into the experience, there was opportunity to deliver a more exciting or dramatic conclusion.

Tips for Visiting

Book your hour with Escape Chronicles’ Testing Facility, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: Escape Chronicles provided media discounted tickets for this game.

Escape Chronicles – Smugglers Tunnels [Review]

by Lisa Spira, posted in Escape Chronicles, Los Angeles, Reviews

Roguish overtones.

Location: North Hollywood, CA

Date Played: August 26, 2018

Team size: 2-8; we recommend 4-5

Duration: 60 minutes

Price: $30 per ticket

Ticketing: Public

REA Reaction

Smugglers Tunnels was a clandestine, puzzle-focused, point-based heist. The puzzles were the gem of Smugglers Tunnels. We had to solve our way through every part of this operation.

While we felt the role-play aspect was unfinished, we think there’s an opportunity to rework that portion to add depth to this escape room. Regardless, the roles didn’t make or break an otherwise excellent puzzle adventure.

If you’re in Los Angeles, there is art here you’ll want to get your hands on.

In-game: a glowing lantern, flashlight, and lockbox next to a small barred passageway with a chain running through it.

Who is this for?

  • Adventure seekers
  • Puzzle lovers
  • Any experience level
  • Players who don’t need to be a part of every puzzle

Why play?

  • Badass moments
  • Interesting puzzles
  • Point-based scoring

Story

The forger in our crew of high-end thieves had double-crossed us. For years this guy had been creating clever forgeries and swapping them out with our rightfully stolen goods. We had reassembled the team to steal back what had been wrongfully taken from us.

In-game: a rolltop desk beside a stack of crates and an artest palet.

Setting

The forger kept his artwork underground. We began in two distinct lantern-lit tunnels. We needed to work our way into the forger’s workspace to get our hands on the art. The gamespace was dim with dark, bricklike walls and wooden furniture and props. It had an underground vibe.

In-game: a pegboard with storage for all of the loot gathered in the game.

Gameplay

Escape Chronicles’ Smugglers Tunnels was a standard escape room with a moderate level of difficulty.

We aimed to steal back the highest possible value in stolen goods to achieve a high score. Points were scored by adding a stolen item to our collection display.

We each had a role on the team (mastermind, safecracker, etc). Our wristband explained what our special knowledge and abilities were, and how to use any role-specific props that we were given.

In-game: close up of a wrist cuff with a series of symbols.

Core gameplay revolved around searching, puzzling, and applying our roles’ knowledge and abilities to the game.

Analysis

+ The point-based heist worked well. The more valuable our theft, the better we scored. The set up, however, was not as straightforward as collecting the most items. There was nuance… which could be solved.

– We each had a specific role on the heist team, but the roles weren’t justified in the experience. We each received additional cluing for our role, but it didn’t feel like outside knowledge, special to the character that possessed it. Instead it felt like reading material that we would have preferred to find baked into the game. This cluing functioned as mini runbook wristbands.

In-game: a locked box displaying the Declaration of Independence.

+ The puzzles were varied and challenging. We enjoyed so many satisfying solves.

– We would have liked to see Escape Chronicles take additional steps to justify the existence of these puzzles in their narrative.

+ Escape Chronicles turned one common escape room process puzzle into an legitimately challenging communication and logic puzzle. It was a much-needed path through an overused escape room trope.

In-game: a glowing lantern resting on a lock box in a stone tunnel.

+ The dimness didn’t bother us. It made sense. We had plenty of lanterns that we could carry around and set next to various props. This setup also culminated in a fantastic puzzle sequence.

– In one instance, Smugglers Tunnels asked us to search for a minute detail. This took us out of the game. In this one instance the lighting irked us.

+ Smugglers Tunnels had a couple of badass moments that worked well with the underground staging.

Tips for Visiting

Book your hour with Escape Chronicles’ Smugglers Tunnels, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: Escape Chronicles provided media discounted tickets for this game.