Location: Greenville, SC

Players: 2-8 (We recommend 2-4)

Price: $27 (Public Booking) or $30 (Private Booking) per person

Time to Escape: 60 minutes

Great Scott!

Theme:

You’ve been invited to the workshop of one of the greatest inventors of our time, and his apprentice is here to give you the grand tour! There’s a couple of things he’ll need to take care of before he can safely take you around, so you wait for him in the main workshop. After he falls into a wormhole, however, (occupational hazard, pretty standard really,) it is up to you to find some way to get him out before the portal closes up for good!

First Impressions:

Escape Artist Greenville has some incredibly good set designers on their hands, and as we stepped into the Inventor’s Enigma, we were definitely not disappointed in what we saw! Furthermore, the upbeat and in character GM continued to prove that the staff here were 100% committed to delivering excellent experiences!

High Points:

One of the most stand out parts of Inventor’s Enigma is how tactile the whole room is. Almost every puzzle involves at least a light bit of moving or manipulation of props, and it fits extremely well with the theme. Nothing overly physical, but when in an inventor’s workshop, it’s always fun to be able to play around with their tools! This room also contains one of the best hidden surprises we’ve seen in a while, taking us by surprise almost 200 rooms in. That’s no easy feat! As usual for Escape Artist Greenville, the set is amazing, and highly immersive, providing more than just a room of puzzles and truly bringing you into the world of the story. The GMing here is great too, with hints and interactions being on theme throughout the experience, allowing the game to stay in universe throughout the experience. As you progress through the game, puzzles bounce between rooms, and bread crumbs you discover will provide satisfying ah ha moments as you come back to a puzzle that stumped you before. Some very simple, yet innovative pieces of tech bring this quirky room to life in unexpected ways, challenging the group to think outside the box throughout the escape.

Low Points:

Inventor’s Enigma felt like a different room that had been upgraded into a newer theme and “remastered” a bit, and our Game Master confirmed that that is exactly what had been done. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but we were a little confused about how this inventor had invented a wormhole that the whole story revolved around, but it seemed pretty much all he engaged with inventing was cars. Apparently the previous room had been about a racecar driver, so that cleared a lot up. The theming would’ve benefitted from less focus on cars and more on fantastical steampunk inventions to be more in line with what we were expecting. The cluing overall needs work, as some things are hidden around the room for the sake of being hidden, and while we found them, it is always much more fun to find items based off a puzzle rather than because they were just hidden somewhere. A late game puzzle was a great idea, and very tactile, but the clues themselves were either extremely direct or incredibly vague, frustrating us during  one of the most climactic moments of the game.

Verdict:

Inventor’s Enigma is a good room that could use a bit more adjustment to the flux capacitor in order to make it really great. It’s an upgraded older room that would really benefit from further distancing from it’s previous incarnation to become it’s own entity, but a good room nonetheless. If you like Escape Artist Greenville, I definitely recommend checking this one out! You can book your time saving the Inventor’s apprentice here!

7/10 (Good)

Full Disclosure: Escape Artist Greenville provided media discounted tickets for our team.