Latest update: January 22, 2020
On our trip to Colorado, we drove an hour and 15 minutes south of Denver to Colorado Springs, where there were lots of fun games to play. These are our top recommendations for Colorado Springs.
We also have recommendations for Denver and Fort Collins.
Latest update: January 15, 2020
There are tons of escape rooms in Colorado, more per capita than any other state. On our trip to Colorado, we drove an hour due north of Denver to Fort Collins where we found a few companies creating unique experiences.
If you’re looking for an escape room in Fort Collins, Colorado, check out our recommendations below.
We also have recommendations for Denver and Colorado Springs.
Latest update: January 8, 2020
Denver has a lot of escape room companies. In fact, Colorado had the most escape room companies per capita in both 2018 & 2019. Here is our guide to the best escape rooms in Denver.
If you’re in the area, check out our guides to Fort Collins and Colorado Springs.
Chuga Chuga Chuga Chuga. Search! Search!
Location: Broomfield, CO
Date Played: September 6, 2019
Team size: up to 8; we recommend 4-5
Duration: 60 minutes
Price: $30 per player
Ticketing: Public
Emergency Exit Rating: [A+] No Lock
Physical Restraints: [A+] No Physical Restraints
Themescape’s The Terminal had a cool-looking graffitied NYC subway set. It was for the best that it looked good because the game felt like it was about 95% search-based.
The entirety of the experience was grounded in escape room logic. Nothing made sense. It hearkened back to the earliest days of escape rooms.
We just didn’t like this game. It always feels tragic to see a weak game in a solid set. Themescape’s The Gate was considerably more interesting. I’d strongly encourage playing it over The Terminal.
A blackout had killed power to New York City. However, a runaway subway train was barreling towards the end of the line. We had to restore power and engage the train’s emergency brakes.
The Terminal looked like a modern New York City subway station… but created to evoke the graffitied imagery associated with the New York City of a few decades ago.
The set looked pretty good, even if it didn’t ring true to me at all as a New Yorker.
Themescape’s The Terminal was a standard escape room with a low level of difficulty.
Core gameplay revolved around searching.
➕ Themescape crafted a bright and busy train station set. It looked pretty good.
➖ The gameplay was almost entirely search. Once we had everything we needed, puzzles solved in seconds. Any time we paused, it was because of a search fail.
➖ The Terminal lacked gating. We spent a lot of time trying to solve puzzles before we’d found all of the components. There was no in-game cluing to clarify that these puzzles weren’t active yet.
➕ The Terminal had one large set piece that was a fun input mechanism. It had another nifty device that gave some variety to the continual searching.
➖ The cluing was misleading. In one instance, we found a “secret clue.” Due to the labeling of the clue, we thought the game could be solved without it. The thing was, a note on a prop had already led us away from the item now in play due to the “secret clue.” This entire set up was baffling.
Book your hour with Themescape’s The Terminal, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.
Disclosure: Themescape comped our tickets for this game.
Disclosure: Our trip to Denver was sponsored by the Denver escape room community. Contributions were anonymous.
Puzzle Gear
Location: Loveland, CO
Date Played: September 6, 2019
Team size: up to 10; we recommend 3-5
Duration: 60 minutes
Price: $24.99 per player
Ticketing: Public
Emergency Exit Rating: [A+] No Lock
Physical Restraints: [A+] No Physical Restraints
Area Q was a unique experience. Some of it was brilliant and some of it was a mess (literally and figuratively).
The crux of the game was built around a heist. We were stealing something and needed to navigate the security system as well as the guard. In a lot of ways, it felt a lot like a Metal Gear game.
The cool thing about Area Q was that there were a lot of different ways to play it. If you played Area Q as a straight puzzle room, however, I think that you would find it pretty dull; the puzzles were decidedly subpar. That said, you don’t have to play it that way. It can be what you make of it.
I’m really glad that we played this game because it was different. Q The Live Escape Experience tried some interesting concepts… and they nailed the actor interactions. The catch here was that the puzzles, cleanliness, and finer points of set design felt all but ignored.
If you’re open to a unique experience that is equal parts exciting and flawed, then this is worth checking out. However, if you’re looking for something that is more grounded in escape room tradition and functions more smoothly, The Conjuror was a stronger all-around game.
A meteor had crashed into Earth and had been retrieved by a criminal organization. Their scientists had extracted alien bacteria and used it to engineer a plague. Now they planned to auction it to the highest bidder.
Our assignment: infiltrate the facility under cover of darkness, avoid being caught by the guard, steal the plague sample, and plant a bomb to destroy the remaining samples.
Area Q sent us down into a rustic research lab. The reality of this staging was a game in a large, dusty, and dark warehouse space. Most of the set pieces were large wooden crates behind a chain-link fence. The laboratory portions felt hacked together.
It was spartan.
Every 10 minutes, like clockwork, a security guard patrolled the space. The actor was fantastic and really imbued this character with a personality.
Q The Live Escape Experience’s Area Q was an actor-driven escape room with a moderate level of difficulty.
Core gameplay revolved around searching, puzzling, hiding, and engaging with the actor.
➕ Area Q was an escape room in principle, but the gameplay was open ended. We could play it straight by solving puzzles, or go for a more dramatic, improvisational approach with the actor.
➕ The guard gave this game intrigue. He walked with personality. He was imposing and threatening, but also amusing. He was adaptive too. He would play the type of game that the players wanted to play. When we chose to mess with him, he gave it right back to us. This was a ton of fun.
➖ The puzzles were downright boring. They felt like tedious work we had to slog through. It didn’t help that we had to abandon them and hide every time the guard approached.
➖ The gameplay was largely search-focused. Search was frustrating because the set was large and dark. Although we weren’t bumping into things, we weren’t keen on blind searching, considering the dirt and splintery props.
➕ Although Area Q was a dark space, it needed to be for the premise of the game. We had enough flashlights for each teammate. The space was also devoid of clutter and tripping hazards. We weren’t going to miss these props.
➖ There is a difference between a dirty-looking set and an actually dirty set. Area Q was filthy. After hiding in this set, we were covered in dirt and dust.
➕ Area Q had a laissez-faire approach to solving. There was no definitive way to accomplish something. We could solve the puzzles or find our own means to accomplish our heist. In fact, they’d designed different paths to get teams to the same ending. Depending on how a team approached the game, different things could happen, but none of them would be game-ending. Instead, they would set the team on a different path to a successful ending.
➖ There were opportunities to make the props more interesting. For example, the plague sample we needed to steal could have looked like something we wanted to get our hands on.
➖ Area Q built a ton of tension with the constant hiding and the actor dramatics. Given this build up, the ending fell flat. Our exit from the gamespace was anticlimactic in comparison.
Book your hour with Q The Live Escape Experience’s Area Q, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.
Disclosure: Q The Live Escape Experience comped our tickets for this game.
Disclosure: Our trip to Denver was sponsored by the Denver escape room community. Contributions were anonymous.
