Room Escape Artist

Puzzle with Scarface.

Location: Nashville, TN

Date Played: February 11, 2018

Team size: up to 8; we recommend 2-4

Duration: 60 minutes

Price: $26.99 per ticket for adults, $20.99 per ticket for children

REA Reaction

Capone was a typical search-and-puzzle escape room. It worked, but it didn’t wow.

Who is this for?

• Two-bit gangsters
• Any experience level

Why play?

• The cozy staging
• The transition

Story

Al Capone believes we narced on him to the FBI. We’ve been locked up in his apartment and he’s coming back in an hour to deal with us if we can’t find our way our first.

Setting

Capone’s elegant apartment set felt lived in. Nearly everything within the game looked and felt like it belonged there. It was a charming environment.

Gameplay

Capone was a standard search-and-puzzle escape room that leaned more towards puzzling.

Standouts

The set was elegant. It evoked the bygone era and felt homey.

The gameplay largely worked.

There was a fun transition sequence. It was unexpected, humorous, and interactive.

Shortcomings

Much of the gameplay involved reading laminated texts and applying these to props. The gameplay felt uninspired, requiring different versions of the same connection on multiple occasions.

Capone was flat. With the exception of one transition, it didn’t deliver energetic or memorable moments; it never evolved in complexity or intrigue. There wasn’t much of a climax or finale.

Tips for Visiting

• Parking: There is parking outside the escape room.

Book your hour with Trapped Escape Game Nashville’s Capone, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

The next Room Escape Conference is taking place in Nashville, TN from July 27-29, 2018. The conference organizers sponsored our trip to Nashville, Murfreesboro, and Franklin to play this game and others in the region. We strive to help conference attendees visit the room escapes that are best for them.

The pig may have been blind, but the designer sure wasn’t.

Location: Murfreesboro, TN

Date Played: February 10, 2018

Team size: up to 5; we recommend 3-4

Duration: 60 minutes

Price: $24 per ticket

REA Reaction

The Blind Pig came together spectacularly. The, puzzles, interactions, and reveals made it a ton of fun. While we’ve played plenty of escape rooms with more impressive sets, puzzles, and technology, few escape rooms have felt as satisfying to play through as The Blind Pig. 

Who is this for?

• Puzzle lovers
• Scenery snobs
• Contraband contrarians
• Players with at least some experience
• Players who don’t mind tight spaces

Why play?

• The set
• The puzzles
• The excitement

Story

Prohibition had returned and many recreational substances had been outlawed. A speakeasy of sorts known as The Blind Pig could help us get what we needed, but with the police on our tails we had little time to complete the task.

Setting

The Blind Pig let us loose in a narrow alleyway between a few different businesses. It looked convincing. It was filled with interesting details and interactions.

Gameplay

The Blind Pig’s gameplay felt like a traditional escape room with plenty to discover and puzzle through in fairly equal proportions.

Additionally, Murfreesboro Escape Rooms made great use of technology to produce unexpected interactions.

Standouts

The Blind Pig was playful despite a more intense theme. From the set, to the interactions, to the puzzles, it was a lot of fun to move through this escape room.

The varied puzzles solved tangibly, but differently from one another. Murfreesboro Escape Rooms combined pure physicality with tech-driven opens. In both cases, these were satisfying solves.

Although we uncovered written passages, these never felt burdensome. They added clue structure in the form of narrative. It worked. Furthermore, the reading material was tangible and durable.

Murfreesboro Escape Rooms concealed a lot of secrets in and around this speakeasy. From its opening moments through our triumphant exit, again and again, spaces were not as they had originally seemed.

We really enjoyed the set of The Blind Pig. This extended beyond its reveals to various tangible set pieces and props. It was a fun space to explore.

Shortcomings

Although on the outside the set was polished, as we unlocked spaces, we didn’t always find the same refinement inside… and some of these interior spaces would have benefitted from additional fit and finish.

In the second act, the puzzles didn’t flow as cleanly as they had earlier on. The locks seemed unconnected to the puzzles and we couldn’t rely on proximity to determine where to enter a solution. Additional lock-to-puzzle cluing would improve the late game puzzle flow.

The Blind Pig felt crowded, especially around some of the opens. With five adults in the space, we were continually stepping on one another other or maneuvering around each other and whatever set piece was in play.

Tips for Visiting

• There is parking out front.
• We enjoyed the muffins (and other delicacies) at Mimi’s Cafe.

Book your hour with Murfreesboro Escape Rooms’ The Blind Pig, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

The next Room Escape Conference is taking place in Nashville, TN from July 27-29, 2018. The conference organizers sponsored our trip to Nashville, Murfreesboro, and Franklin to play this game and others in the region. We strive to help conference attendees visit the room escapes that are best for them.

Explore a treasure.

Location: Franklin, TN

Date Played: February 10, 2018

Team size: 2-11; we recommend 3-5

Duration: 60 minutes

Price: from $28 per ticket

REA Reaction

Treasure of Pacari included some of the most impressive set design and interactions that we’ve encountered to date. LiveMinds Adventure Escape poured so much love, skill, and attention into this gamespace… and they are flirting with true greatness. With a bit more work, they could nail the gameflow. If they do that, this will be a genuine treasure.

Who is this for?

• Adventure seekers
• Scenery snobs
• Indiana Jones wannabes
• Best for players with at least some experience

Why play?

• The set
• Incredible attention to detail
• Large-scale interactions
• The whole facility is cool

Story

Following in the footsteps of a famed and missing archeologist, we were seeking a powerful and mysterious artifact lost within Aztec ruins.

Setting

LiveMinds Adventure Escape’s set design was dumbfounding. This is what the hallways between LiveMinds’ games looked like:

I’m going to repeat this: these spaces had absolutely nothing to do with the games and they weren’t even the lobby. These were hallways.

The Aztec ruins of Treasure of Pacari were absolutely gorgeous and otherworldly. Each new space that we discovered had a unique feel, but was clearly part of the larger whole. The level of detail in the set’s construction was off the chart. There was so much to look at that David spent a fair amount of time simply taking in the set… because I had my head in the book with most of the clues.

Gameplay

Treasure of Pacari was all about the adventure. The set and the interactions facilitated this by presenting puzzles that felt Indiana Jones-esque. We had to reference our notebook, explore the space, and determine how to properly manipulate the environment in order to progress.

The size and scope of everything made this room escape feel enormous. There weren’t that many puzzles, but everything was memorable.

Standouts

The puzzles in Treasure of Pacari required us to interact with the set. Our role was tangible, physical, and exciting. The scale of these interactions fit with the enormity of the gamespace.

The expansive set amazed us. LiveMinds Adventure Escape’s attention to detail was breathtaking. They fully developed these spaces and everything they contained. Treasure of Pacari rivaled the most impressive sets we’ve seen to date.

The artwork was beautiful.

The excess. One puzzle had hundreds of components. It was nuts. They didn’t need to do it. There was no need to build animatronics. They didn’t need to produce a lobby and hallway with more nuance and finish than most escape room companies put into their games. There was no need for the level of detail, but LiveMinds Adventure Escape did it… and it was so worth it.

Shortcomings

The puzzles lacked feedback. We weren’t always sure which interaction had triggered a reveal. We couldn’t necessarily tell if we had completed the interaction from a specific prop or set piece. Sometimes doorways opened and we didn’t hear or see them pop. LiveMinds Adventure Escape could use lighting and sound to clarify when players accomplish solves.

Many puzzles lacked clue structure. Most existing clueing was buried in a journal. Beautiful as the space was, with my eyes in a book, I missed many of the more impressive set reveals. Only one person could look at this journal at a time so players were either poking around the set blindly or heads down in a book. It would have been cooler to see the written information reduced and worked into the set.

Our actions could have unintended and unsafe consequences. If players have the capability to manipulate large set pieces, LiveMinds Adventure Escape needs to build precautions that keep other players out of the way of heavy moving props.

Despite all the tech-driven opens in this escape room, the final reveal was an unclued, manual interaction. We recommend restructuring the ending so that the challenge is in solving the puzzles, not determining what they reveal. This structure deflated the drama of the win.

Tips for Visiting

• There is parking out front.
• We enjoyed The Tin Roof 2, especially their signature sandwich.

Book your hour with LiveMinds Adventure Escape’s Treasure of Pacari, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

The next Room Escape Conference is taking place in Nashville, TN from July 27-29, 2018. The conference organizers sponsored our trip to Nashville, Murfreesboro, and Franklin to play this game and others in the region. We strive to help conference attendees visit the room escapes that are best for them.

Unfulfilled potential.

Location: Nashville, TN

Date Played: February 11, 2018

Team size: up to 9; we recommend 3-4

Duration: 60 minutes

Price: $25 per ticket

REA Reaction

Music City Escape drew inspiration from obscure (to Americans) and interesting events. From this, they landed at one inventive game mechanic. Unfortunately, Japanese Thriller couldn’t capitalize on any of this. The set was too haphazardly constructed and worn out; the puzzles weren’t constructed cleanly. There’s a great concept here, but Japanese Thriller needs more attention before we can recommend it.

Who is this for?

• Hopeful Japanese gameshow contestants

Why play?

• The introduction
• Experimental game mechanics

Story

We were contestants on an edgy Japanese gameshow themed on a mixture of horror movies, the Aum Shinrikyo death cult responsible for the 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway (and the near total disappearance of public trash cans in Tokyo), and the apartment of serial killer Futoshi Matsunaga.

We had to escape the place where countless people had been tortured and murdered.

Setting

Japanese Thriller was set in a bland apartment with puzzle components and Japanese props. It was a visually unimpressive escape room.

Gameplay

The core of the game was rooted in searching and puzzling, as we typically expect from an escape room. There were also hidden gems that we could uncover through detailed searching to earn additional points.

More interestingly, at any point in the game, a haunting could occur. The lights would start flickering and we would have to stop what we were working on, find the only room without flickering lights, and close the door with ourselves in that room. Failure to do this would result a in a points penalty.

Standouts

The introductory sequence was captivating. The video was intriguing. Our gamemaster played off this, lightening the intense theme with humor. It worked.

The puzzles generally resolved cleanly. Puzzles were clearly delineated. We could easily follow the parallel threads of gameplay.

Music City Escape’s addition of the haunting was a conceptually fun addition to the escape room format.

This might be the first time a Sudoku was thematically appropriate.

Shortcomings

Despite its thematic relevance, there was a Sudoku. We’d prefer to see puzzles that utilize the physical space inherent in escape rooms.

The set was bland, haphazardly constructed, and worn. It felt cheap and lazy especially when compared with the overwhelming majority of escape rooms we visited in the region.

While we liked the idea of the haunting mechanic, Music City Escape never realized the full potential of this concept. It felt more like an annoyance than an exciting challenge.

The introduction captivated our attention and posed an intriguing mystery. Solving the escape room didn’t deliver any resolution or even make much use of the elaborate setup.

Tips for Visiting

• Parking: There is a large parking lot.
• Food: There are a few dining options in and around this plaza.

The next Room Escape Conference is taking place in Nashville, TN from July 27-29, 2018. The conference organizers sponsored our trip to Nashville, Murfreesboro, and Franklin to play this game and others in the region. We strive to help conference attendees visit the room escapes that are best for them.