Location: Morrisville, NC

Price: $25 Per Person

Players: 4-12 (4 is a hard minimum, we recommend 6)

Time to Escape: 60 Minutes

 

The Geek Room is proudly touted to be Cipher Escape’s most difficult room on their website, and it really does deliver on a tough, but fair, experience.

Theme:

The story of the Geek Room is that you’ve been asked to take care of your elderly neighbor’s cat, but once you’ve entered, the door has locked behind you and you need to search their techie house to escape. Why 4-12 people are needed to feed this cat is a conundrum in itself, but that’s beside the point. Overall, the story is just there to set up the “geek” theme, which doesn’t really hold up throughout the whole experience.

General Thoughts:

The Geek Room is very obviously just a big puzzle to solve, since the story and theme seem like more of an afterthought. This isn’t a bad thing, however, since the puzzling is solid, and the metapuzzle was fun to figure out. The room is littered with objects to find and interact with, and puzzles made good logical sense. Our group of four attacked the room fairly chaotically, which worked to our advantage, since there was just so much to do during our escape. There were a couple of fun technological surprises that worked very well and added to the fun, but I never felt immersed in a story.

High Points:

There were several puzzle paths to take, so none of us were at any point bored or lacking in things to do. All the technology worked smoothly and gave proper feedback, and many of the puzzles were well thought out and original. One interaction early on helped cement our need to work as a team, and had a satisfying conclusion.

Low Points:

One puzzle we spent the entire room coming back to and trying was one you’d expect grandma to buy and keep in her living room. It was off theme, cheap looking, and just a poor puzzle overall. In order to get past it, we asked for a hint and were told “I don’t have one for you.” This did nothing but frustrate us further, forcing us to give up and roll the dials on the lock until we’d skipped it. A couple of the puzzles were poorly clued, and one was already halfway open when we entered. It was explained that, yeah, it does that sometimes, which was a wholly unsatisfying answer.

Verdict:

Barring a frustrating gate puzzle, and a few failures on the part of the GM, The Geek Room was a fantastic time. Though it felt like a pure puzzle room rather than an immersive experience, this worked in it’s favor. Make sure you have a big enough group to tackle all the room has to offer, as though we escaped with only 4 teammates, we cut it close and were told that we were the first to successfully do so with the bare minimum. Beginners will enjoy the approachable puzzles, and enthusiasts will find fun technology to puzzle with. You can book your adventure in the Geek Room here!

7.5/10 (Good)