Category: Raleigh, NC

The Tower Escapes – The Castle of Loches (Review)

~ EscapeAdventurer ~ Leave a comment

Location: Raleigh, NC

Players: 2-8 (We recommend 3-5)

Price: $28 per person

Time to Escape: 60 minutes

Castles, Card Games, and Crimes Most Foul

Theme:

David Perrin, President of the Banque Nationale de Paris, has been murdered! Your crack team of crime scene investigators have been called in to the historic Castle of Loches to quickly deduce who the murderer is and bring them to justice. Your superiors want this done quickly, as they don’t want the castle’s reputation sullied by this event. Stay organized and gather the evidence, and you might just be able to solve the mystery in time!

First Impressions:

As we’ve spoken about in our previous Tower Escapes reviews, their location is quite the draw. The old water tower is great for historically based rooms, and the location for The Castle of Loches is based on an actual site in France. The stonework inside the room provides and excellent environment for this adventure, and we’re always happy to engage with a room that has roots based in history!

High Points:

The Castle of Loches is definitely The Tower Escapes’ most elaborate set, but it is still a no frills affair, with everything included in the room being important to solving the mystery. We were told up front that we should be careful and only move that which we felt we needed to, as there were clues which were in certain spots for a reason. We are generally against destructible state puzzles like this, but we appreciated the heads up, and as we progressed through the room, it became more clear what was moveable and what should stay put. For the most part, anything that needed to stay put was also affixed, keeping our anxiety about moving something important low.

This room also contained some of the most original puzzles The Tower Escapes has to offer. While there are a few excellent technical moments, the majority of the room is very mechanical, but this plays into the room’s favor as it is better able to hide the amazing ah ha moments that some of the puzzles deliver. Most interactions are highly tactile and utilize the space they are contained within well. The game itself begins with an ever so slightly non-linear run of puzzles that quickly become linear, but the linearity allows the flow of the room to be gated well, delivering new clues at a steady and appropriate pace. The final puzzle is highly intuitive and allows for a fun climax to the room, validating your sleuthing when the door satisfyingly pops open.

Low Points:

One of the worst things to come across in a room is a trick lock that isn’t clued properly. Luckily, our group has seen almost all of them and know how to open the vast majority, so half of us were able to quickly solve the one that was included in Castle of Loches. However, newer players might be incredibly lost at this point as most trick locks are designed to be puzzled over for a long time and generally aren’t a good fit for escape rooms. There’s also a very small bit of outside knowledge, but this is easily overcome at the end of the game. One puzzle is a repeat of another Tower Escapes room, damaging some of the value of having a separate game, though most casual players will tend not to come across this problem. One particular puzzle was problematic as there was exactly zero logical clues to tie into its solving, however, after chatting with the owner about this particular interaction, we’re confident that a more logical and well clued puzzle will come from a new iteration.

Verdict:

The Castle of Loches is a good escape adventure that, as of our escape, had a few bumpy issues here and there. Luckily, after speaking to the owner and giving our feedback after the game, I’m very confident that he was open to our suggestions and will iterate the room to ensure that these problems are quickly ironed out, if they haven’t been resolved already! The toughest room at The Tower Escapes, The Castle of Loches is definitely not for the uninitiated, but I think with a couple of rooms under your belt, you’ll be ready to take it on! Enthusiasts will find some really original puzzles to engage with, and I recommend giving this one a shot. Gather your team of investigators and solve the mystery here!

7/10 (Good)

Full Disclosure: The Tower Escapes comped our tickets for this room.

The Tower Escapes – The Secret of the Tower Keeper (Review)

~ EscapeAdventurer ~ 1 Comment

Location: Raleigh, NC

Players: 2-10 (We recommend 4-6)

Price: $28 per person

Time to Escape: 60 minutes

Climb the tower, find the grail!

Theme:

From The Tower Escapes website:

The downtown water tower was abandoned in 1924, its tank removed and a larger metal tower erected further west.

The city long considered demolishing the earlier structure, but in 1938 sold the property to Raleigh architect William Henley Deitrick. Deitrick, who was garnering a regional reputation for modernist design, chose to convert the aging tower into his architectural offices.

William had a great interest in Medieval history, crusades, and historic artifacts, some say he spent most of his life in search of Holy Grail.

You have an hour to find out the secret of the Tower Keeper.

First Impressions:

Speculative fiction themed escape rooms are usually a lot of fun, but when you couple that with being in the actual structure the story is based on, it adds a whole new level of immersion to the game! This was the room we were most excited about when visiting The Tower Escapes, as we were assured we’d be climbing the tower as we solved the puzzles!

screenshot_20181204-093055_facebook5845837213427093555.jpg

The escape room is in the back there. Don’t see it? It’s that giant tower.

High Points:

The storyline is imaginative and clever, and it luckily doesn’t end the second you begin the room as some promising themes tend to. In fact, the experience feels like a Da Vinci Code-esque adventure in the middle of downtown Raleigh. Wrapped within the original stone walls of the water tower, the sense of immersion is truly quite high. The story is delivered via the linear gameplay, which works well to gate off new revelations as you progress through the story. Puzzles are mostly intuitive, and the game flow works well between each point, giving great feedback to keep players on track. The puzzles sprinkled throughout the rooms are very original, with hand built tech keeping the whole thing feeling authentic. Several points along the way provide great reveals, keeping the surprises coming and the enigmas rolling along at a steady clip. The room itself isn’t overly cluttered, and it always seems like what you find is important, as long as you can make the connections. Signposting for hints is superb, with small details providing huge ah ha moments. Overall, the room is just satisfying to play through, puzzle-wise.

Low Points:

Some information is provided via stickers, which seems a bit out of place overall and make the props look worse. The linearity is a double edged sword and can bottleneck groups, causing larger parties to have folks that are standing around waiting for puzzles to be solved. One particular part of the game involved entering a code into a randomly placed input device; I’ve never seen something like this hidden quite so strangely, and we were lucky to spot it. The ending is somewhat anticlimactic, with the story just coming to a sudden halt. Because of this, the room feels much shorter than expected, with everything stopping just as it feels like the game is picking up speed.

Verdict:

With a highly original mix of puzzles and an engaging storyline, Secret of the Tower Keeper shows some real promise. While we found it to be a bit on the easy side, our group of enthusiasts had a lot of fun climbing the old water tower in search of the Holy Grail. A good choice for new players and enthusiasts looking for something out of the norm, I definitely recommend checking this one out! Book your time investigating the Tower Keeper’s secrets here!

7.5/10 (Good)

Full Disclosure: The Tower Escapes comped our tickets for this room.

The Tower Escapes – A Bootlegger’s Den (Review)

~ EscapeAdventurer ~ 1 Comment

Location: Raleigh, NC

Players: 2-6 (We recommend 2-4)

Price: $28 per person

Time to Escape: 60 minutes

We’re blowing this joint, see?

Theme:

It’s the height of prohibition, and your daring group of rum runners have set up your headquarters in the heart of Raleigh’s judicial district, hiding a successful speakeasy right under the noses of the authorities. Unfortunately, your hubris might be your undoing, as the police have caught wind of your activities, and are set to raid your lair in an hour! The boss has tasked you with getting the cash out of the hideout before the cops arrive, and he’s made sure you cannot leave before the job is done, so work quick or be caught in the act!

First Impressions:

The Tower Escapes was recommended to us by Room 5280, and we were excited to be one of the first groups to experience their rooms! It’s always fun to go to a new place and help with feedback; it’s one of my favorite parts of this job. It doesn’t hurt that The Tower Escapes has such a fantastic location, housed within an old water tower in the heart of downtown Raleigh. That alone was enough to peak my interest.

screenshot_20181204-093055_facebook5845837213427093555.jpg

Hard to believe I’ve walked past this beautiful structure several times without noticing it! It takes an escape room for me to pay any attention, apparently.

High Points:

The room being within a historical building absolutely helps with authentic immersion, and the initial parts of the game feel very much like the underbelly of a prohibition speakeasy. It’s interestingly decorated, but much like Room 5280, only that which is important is included, so the room is slightly sparser, which makes sense theme-wise. We began our game handcuffed by the boss, though we were advised that this was an optional part of the game, so anyone worried about restraints should be aware this isn’t required to enjoy the room. The game starts out slightly non-linear, but becomes strictly linear soon thereafter, but our group of four was well engaged with the adventure from start to finish, with a few hiccups being the only thing removing us from the story.

Game flow works fairly well, this being a fairly linear game, and the connections are mostly very logical. A specific story item was excellently integrated into the game, and bolstered the connective tissue of the game greatly. One particular puzzle was presented very simply, but the reveal of it’s solution was amazingly satisfying for something that seemed basic at first. The climax of the room is a lot of fun, and is a great way to cap off the room.

Low Points:

The room itself is pretty standard, definitely more exciting for beginners than enthusiasts, but we had a good time regardless. There is one particular escape room sin within, as there is a puzzle box that needs to be solved. These are pretty tricky since either people generally know how to open it, or they don’t, and they are fairly underwhelming when they show up in a room. There’s also a puzzle that delivers a fairly large red herring that seemed to us to be a puzzle in itself, but ended up being completely unnecessary to the solution. In two instances, we were able to bypass puzzles entirely, but didn’t realize it as these puzzles do not give much in the way of feedback when solved. In fact, one puzzle that was solved accidentally made us think we’d already solved another, leading to a massive amount of confusion on the whole. Luckily, our game master was able to correct us with a light hint, but I’d definitely recommend adding in a sound to denote when something technical has opened.

Verdict:

A Bootlegger’s Den is a good room for beginners, though a couple of gating issues and vagaries within a couple puzzles hold it back for enthusiasts. The owner, however, is very receptive to feedback, and with a few tweaks, I’m sure this one will definitely improve. I’d recommend trying it out if you have a fairly inexperienced group, but escape veterans might want to check out one of the other rooms on offer for a more challenging experience. You can book your time in the Bootlegger’s Den here!

6.5/10 (Alright)

Full Disclosure: The Tower Escapes comped our tickets for this room.

Room 5280 – The Dark Room (Review)

~ EscapeAdventurer ~ Leave a comment

Location: Raleigh, NC

Players: 2-6 (We recommend 3-4)

Price: $28 per person

Time to Escape: 60 minutes

In the dark of the night!

Theme:

Something strange happened in this mysterious dark room, and it’s up to you to determine what. The previous occupant is long gone, but the mystery endures. Follow their lead, and you might just make it out. There’s more than meets the eye to unearth within, but you’ll have to discover the path within an hour, otherwise you might become part of the mystery itself!

First Impressions:

The Dark Room, like Classified, is slight on details in order to heighten the mystery of the room. From what we could gather, however, this would be a spooky, though not outright scary, adventure. Further, the room was based on a true story, with psychological roots, so we were very excited to uncover the mystery behind this escape!

High Points:

The atmosphere of The Dark Room is excellent, as the pitch darkness coupled with creepy props and designs quickly immersed our group within the world of the room. It became immediately clear that the previous captive of this room had left bread crumbs for us along the way, and these were hidden well, but highly intuitively for the most part! The theme of the room was pretty great, with subtle hints as to what might be going on buried within the puzzles and props. We liked the idea that someone had already escaped, and we were following in their footsteps, as it sort of flipped the ubiquitous kidnapping genre on it’s head.

Once again, we appreciated the trademark streamlined set and game flow of Room 5280, as well as the great use of almost everything in the room to contribute to the puzzles, connecting everything together cleverly. Each clue along the way feels important, ensuring that the experience was light on filler. The game flow works very well, if mostly linearly, and kept us all engaged until the very end with original and finely crafted puzzles. The climax of the room is appropriately exciting, and the interaction at the end was simple, but very much on theme and a lot of fun to experience.

Low Points:

The four of us were only given a couple flashlights in order to explore this dark room, and though this is sometimes done in the name of promoting teamwork, everyone in the room should have their own flashlight, as it alleviates frustrations. I know that I, personally, want to look at and poke everything, so not having a flashlight can make you feel like you’re missing out. One particular puzzle was a lock we hadn’t seen before in a room, which is saying something! Unfortunately, there wasn’t really an intuitive way to open the lock, so it got completely bypassed and we missed out on some key story notes. As it has been said many times, it’s important that you solve puzzles, not locks in escape rooms. This particular lock would benefit from being part of another puzzle, or a clue or two about how to pop it open. One early puzzle involved some particularly hard to find markings that could be made more intuitive with a clue or extra puzzle to determine where they are.

Verdict:

Room 5280 continues to impress with their newest room, delivering a spooky and historically based story that is sure to entertain. Though this one is a bit easier, I think enthusiasts will enjoy the excellent and original puzzles on offer, and newcomers will appreciate The Dark Room as a thrilling introduction to the world of escape rooms. I absolutely recommend giving this and the other three rooms at Room 5280 a shot if you’re in the Raleigh area. Unravel the mystery here!

8/10 (Great)

Full Disclosure: Room 5280 comped our tickets for this room.

Room 5280 – The Heist (Review)

~ EscapeAdventurer ~ 1 Comment

Location: Raleigh, NC

Players: 2-8 (We recommend 4-6)

Price: $28 per person

Time to Escape: 60 minutes

Gold, Cash, Diamonds, and Puzzles! What more could you ask for?

Theme:

An eccentric millionaire lives on the edge of town, and like any good burglar, you’ve been staking his home out for weeks. A man of habit, he always steps out for an hour long walk just before dark, and after much preparation, you’ve decided that now is your time to strike! Once inside, you’ve found that there are so many puzzles and traps hiding away the goods, so you’ll have to be smart and quick if you’re going to leave this place rich! That is, if you’re even able to leave at all.

First Impressions:

The Experiment and Sherlock were some of the most elegantly paced and well crafted escape rooms we had experienced in the area, so we were obviously excited that we had one more room to go during our night out at Room 5280! After a short break, we were led into another spacious and streamlined set, and got to puzzling!

High Points:

The excellent game design philosophies of Room 5280 are yet again exemplified by The Heist. A clean, spacious set where everything matters is married to a very tightly designed game flow that is packed with creative puzzles. Many times as an enthusiast, it is rare that you come upon a puzzle that is 100% something you’ve never seen before and usually there’s a basis of meta-knowledge one uses to solve even the most creative puzzles after a while, but in every room at Room 5280, there is something within the design that manages to be 100% brand new. Though this was the easiest of the three rooms we experienced, it was not without it’s fun challenges, and required a fair amount of thought and logical deduction.

The room was non-linear in some places, but did have a base that was mostly linear. Our team of four stayed engaged with almost every puzzle throughout, however, with each of us taking on a role for each step of the experience. Teamwork was highly encouraged by the design, and the variety between the puzzles themselves rewarded a team with divergent ways of thinking. Slowly gathering new riches during the room was a lot of fun, and a great way to keep the excitement high during the experience. The whole experience was chock full of intuitive ah ha moments and great interactions, ending on a high note of escape!

Low Points:

The directions for one of the late game puzzles come off very vague, and though some of my teammates were able to wrap their heads around it after we went over it several times, (for which I’m eternally grateful, I’d have never figured out that one,) I don’t think any of the challenge would be lost with some tighter wording to better direct players. There is definitely one particular puzzle that would benefit from slightly more cluing, as the connection can be easily made, but from there, a lot of guess and check is required.

Verdict:

Room 5280 absolutely gets my vote as the best escape room business in the city of Raleigh! All of their experiences deliver a steamlined, tightly designed, and overall enjoyable puzzling experience from start to finish. With a fourth room coming up, I am excited to see what they’ve got in store for us next. I absolutely recommend checking out their games whether you’re an enthusiast or beginner, as there are massively clever puzzles in store for players of any experience level! You can book your big Heist here!

8.5/10 (Great)

Full Disclosure: Room 5280 comped our tickets for this room.