Category: Recommendations

Room Escape Artist’s favorite games in the cities we’ve extensively reviewed.

Recommendations Guide: 2-Player Online Escape Games

by Lisa Spira, posted in Recommendations, Reviews

This year, instead of booking a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner out, you might be considering a romantic evening in… with an escape game.

Whether you’re in the same physical space as your Valentine, or connecting virtually, these games will make for a fun date, guaranteed.

Hands of two people forming a heart with a sunset beyond.

Most of these recommendations are adaptations of point-and-click style gameplay. Some have roots in physical escape rooms, and others are influenced by the escape room format. Many were designed by escape room creators during 2020 while they were unable to operate their businesses.

If you can’t have a classic Valentine’s Day out (or even if you can!), here are our picks for Valentine’s Day from home:

Designed for Exactly 2 People

In alphabetical order:

Recommended for 2 People

In alphabetical order:

Invite your Valentine (or anyone else!) and check out our favorite 2-player-friendly virtual escape rooms!

Athens, Greece: Escape Room Recommendations

by Lisa Spira, posted in Athens, Recommendations

Latest update: January 5, 2021

Athens is known for a pronounced style of escape rooms, that I can only describe as epic… but not in the high-budget blockbuster sense. Rather, the Athens escape rooms combined a specific set of traits to deliver exciting, memorable adventures.

We identified 6 traits that made the escape rooms in Athens stand out: length, scale, storytelling, mode setting, safety, and water. You can read more about how these qualities impact the Athens market in our Field Report.

The Pantheon in Athens Greece.

Market Standouts

  1. The Sanatorium, Lockhill
  2. The Bookstore, Paradox Project
  3. El Exorcista, No Exit Escape Rooms

Unusual Gameplay

Set & Scenery Driven

Puzzle Centric

Spooky & Scary

Games with Actors

More Than 90-Minute PlayTime

Scheduling

If you’re booking an escape room trip to Athens, I recommend a group of 4 people.

Embrace an atypical schedule for a few days. Some of these games are long, which means you won’t be fitting tons of escape rooms into each day, and you’ll have less flexibility in the scheduling puzzle. Also, many of the companies only operate on evenings and weekends, but they offer bookings that start as late as midnight.

Accept that horror games have shaped this market and challenge yourself to play them, even if they aren’t usually your preference. Just make sure one of your teammates is bold enough to be the teammate who always goes first into the unknown.

Last Minute Christmas Shopping: The Best Remote Escape Rooms

by Lisa Spira, posted in Recommendations

We’re making Christmas shopping easy this holiday. With a remote escape room, you can buy it and play it from the comfort of home. No shipping required.

Earlier this year, we launched a new page: Remote Escape Room Recommendations Guides. These guides now have a permanent home on REA under “Find a Room” in the top navigation.

Jingle the exuberant elf gamemaster.
Improbable Escape’s The Hot Chocolate Incident

Remote Recommendation Guides

This week we’ve updated many of our remote (play online) recommendations guides:

You can look forward to more recommendations guides on this page in the coming months.

Video Games

For video game recommendations, check out this collection from REA’s video game correspondent Steve Ewing. These games will take you into a different reality for a little while.

Holiday Games

For those of you seeking a bit of holiday cheer, we highly recommend the following online games:

There are many other online holiday escape games out there, and while we cannot play them all, we plan to play and review a few more in the coming weeks. We’re happy to extend our holiday season a little bit longer this year.

The Best Online Escape Games for Tweens and Families

by Lisa Spira, posted in Recommendations

Introduction

If you have young puzzlers bored at home, an online escape game could be the perfect “outing.”

When you have a group of tweens playing together, a skilled gamemaster-as-avatar can make a big difference keeping players working together and staying on track.

When you have a multigenerational group, a great game includes multiple interactions that are accessible and exciting for youngsters, and don’t require very involved solving.

Recommendations

Fuzzy Logic offers multiple playful escape games, hosted by energetic avatar characters that read the teams well and adapt to the needs of the players. Their games include Playground, Villains Lair, and Concert Quest.

An evilvillain's lab with a large raygun.
Villains

Improbable Escapes offers playful themes with adorable sets and accessible puzzle design. Their games include Seven Dwarfs: Mining Mission, Neverland: Heist on the High Seas, and The Hot Chocolate Incident, which is fun for the whole family, except Scrooge.

Santa sitting beside a Christmas tree reading.
The Hot Chocolate Incident

Trapped Puzzle Rooms‘ audio adventures guide solvers into vivid worlds of imagination, rewarding curiosity and creativity. We specifically recommend Super Squad, Holiday Whodunnit, and Monster Smash for younger players.

Illustrated image of a casino floor.
Heist Heist Baby

Avatar Stalker by Project Avatar has a persistent scavenger hunt component that will be accessible to players of all ages. Because the avatar is nonverbal, it would probably be good to have adults “in the room” too, unless your tweens work really well together. Note that the gameplay differs substantially from that of classic escape rooms, and the set is dark and gritty (not scary), so those should all be factors when choosing this one for younger players.

Utya Duck in glowing LED glasses.
Avatar Stalker

Disclaimer

Our hivemind reviewers are all adults (ranging in age from their 20s to their 50s). Some play escape rooms with their children and others sometimes play with their parents or grandparents. While most of us play primarily with other adults, we’ve collected these recommendations based on our collective experiences with different groups of players this year, and checked them with the parents in the group.

Recommendations Guide: Avatar-Guided Online Escape Games

by Lisa Spira, posted in Recommendations

Looking for an online escape game? This is the most common format for remote play.

What is an Avatar?

An avatar is your hands, feets, eyes, ears… your entire body in an online escape room. From behind your computer, in the comfort of your own home, you’ll direct your avatar in what to do to escape the room.

These games need to be booked in advance for specific time slots, just as one would book a real-life escape room. Remote players usually connect with the avatar through Zoom, or another video conferencing platforms.

The avatar might be dumb hands, or they might be a full-fledged character in your experience. As a character, they come in different styles, from eager to take action to fearful to hostile. However they play it, the avatar is a part of experience.

First person view of an old building, the avatar's hands are visible along with various HUD indicators.
Photo of Avatar Stalker

Norms

Most avatar-guided escape games:

  • have a first-person camera angle. You see the physical space from the vantage point of the avatar.
  • utilize a physical room somewhere in the world. The avatar is there, in the space, touching physical game components since you cannot be.
  • set the story such that it makes sense for you to be remote and for the avatar to be on-site.

There are exceptions to all of the above, including in some of our recommendations below, but the constant is the avatar character who acts at your direction.

Hivemind Reviewer Favorites

Listed alphabetically