Escape Room RVA – Unicorns v. Vampires: Vampire Room (Review)

Location: Richmond, VA

Price: $25 per person

Players: 2-7 (We Recommend 3-5)

Time to Escape: 60 Minutes

The Great War Begins!

Theme:

An ancient feud between two factions of mythical creatures has begun to erupt into all out war! The dark vampires and shining unicorns have clashed for centuries, but now, the fight for the light has come to a head! As a group of vampires, you must defend your stronghold from the Unicorn menace and extinguish the light before the power of sparkles and rainbows overwhelm your forces and leave you as piles of ash!

First Impressions:

We were excited to begin our first Richmond tour, and unfortunately, two of our teammates were unable to join us. We jokingly remarked that knowing their luck, this would be one of the best trips ever, and that when we arrived, the game-masters would probably give us ice cream. Imagine our surprise when we arrived at Escape Room RVA and the game-masters offered us ice cream! It was an excellent touch that had nothing to do with the rooms, but was appreciated all the same.

So many ice cream sandwiches!

High Points:

As appropriate for a vampire themed room, our adventure began in the pitch dark, with a lone candle to see by while our mission briefing was delivered to us via an audio clip. Once we figured out how to enter the room proper, we made our way past the rainbow crack in the wall caused by those dastardly unicorns, and began the work to patch up the damage! The set here was fantastic, and highly appropriate to the theme, including gothic imagery and design sensibilities as well as a macabre scattering of bones. Though there were several points we were stumped, puzzles made sense within the confines of the room, and there were several exciting interactions that were brand new to us. The inclusion of a few story related crossovers with the Unicorns were a great touch and lent a bit of humor to the shadowy and vampiric atmosphere.

Low Points:

The competitive aspect of this room was interesting, though we didn’t get to compete against another team on this run. However, it felt as if our team was on defense against the unicorns throughout the entire story, as there wasn’t a point at which we got to strike back. Although holding the unicorns off seemed to be the overall goal, doing so was fairly anticlimactic, especially since we didn’t get to return fire at all. There were a couple puzzles in which we felt there could be more direction, as one involved a little guess and check, (but ultimately made sense through the positioning of the code,) and one had a bit of gray area to muddle though, though our game master was very helpful with our questions about the mechanics of this particular interaction. There was also the issue of not knowing if a puzzle was solved, as doors triggered silently, and not always near the puzzle itself, leading us to sometimes wonder if what we’d done was correct.

Verdict:

An asymmetric competition room is definitely an interesting idea, and Vampires is an entertaining first half of the Unicorns v. Vampires matchup. If you’re into the more macabre side of mythology and don’t have a fear of the dark itself, I highly recommend becoming vampires for an hour and fending off the light! You can book your time as bloodsuckers here!

Also, check out our review for the Unicorns room!

8/10 (Great)

Full Disclosure: Escape Room RVA provided discounted tickets for our group.