Game On Escapes & More – Trapped in the Jungle (Review)

Location: Cary, NC

Players: 2-8 (We recommend 4-5)

Price: $29 per person

Time to Escape: 60 minutes

We need a hero!

Theme:

A team of researchers and explorers went dark within the most shadowy corners of the Amazon. You’ve been sent in to find and extract them, but unfortunately, every night, the scanners go haywire, making it that much more difficult to identify where they are. You’ve found a distress signal late in the day, and as you approach the area, your helicopter suddenly loses power and crashes! It’s up to you to figure out what’s going on before nightfall and get out of there before the mysterious anomaly occurs again!

First Impressions:

MacGregor Manor is hands down one of the best escape rooms in the RDU area, and when we saw that Trapped in a Jungle was going live soon, we had to come back to Game On for more excellent escapes!

High Points:

The centerpiece of the Jungle itself is not only amazing to look at, but is a great hub for a series of well thought out and engaging puzzles! In fact, set design is very well done, and include a wonderful lighting effect to keep a general track of the time before sundown. Though the puzzles themselves seem esoteric at first glance, once you have collected everything you need to solve each interaction, the solutions become clearer and clearer, while still remaining challenging. One of the best parts of this room is that for many of the puzzles, you’ll find props and décor that seems out of place, and as you solve, those items will reveal their relevance in an extremely satisfying ah-ha moment! Even props that seem like mere decorations can surprise you here, and almost everything we touched ended up being important due to the tight puzzle design and excellently directed game flow.

The shift from the early to late game puzzles is thematic, and the beginning of the second half of the game is appropriately mysterious and caught all of us off guard. The later game is more mechanical, and meshes with the new environs in a fantastic way. Care was obviously taken to ensure each step of this adventure related to the theme of the room, and furthered the story. The climax of the game is excellent, and allows you to make a choice I haven’t seen before in an escape room, so kudos to the designers for adding in that excellent interaction!

Low Points:

The only puzzles we needed hints on could’ve used a smidge more direction, though it could be that our team is generally terrible at this type of interaction. One of them, is being iterated per the designer, so it shouldn’t be a problem by the time of this writing. There was an unintentional red herring we came across that took us some time to resolve as meaningless, which we also discussed, and steps are being taken to remove the effect this particular item causes. One puzzle made total sense to us, but could use a slight bit of feedback in order to ensure teams know they’re on the right track.

Verdict:

Trapped in the Jungle is another excellent addition to the Raleigh Durham area escape scene, and I am excited to see what comes next for Game On! The obvious care and attention to detail allows their rooms to shine, and this one is no exception. You should absolutely give them a shot when you’re in Cary, and you can book your time escaping the Amazon here!

8.5/10 (Great)

Full Disclosure: Game on Escapes & More provided media discounted tickets for our team.