Escape Chronicles
North Hollywood, California
Smuggler’s Tunnel: Artifacts, artwork, precious jewels and
more! All just waiting for us to steal it. But how much could we gather before
time ran out?
Testing Facility: An Artificial Intelligence machine has
developed a mind of its own and is literally out of control. We had to find a
way to shut it down before we became its best friends forever.
Pros: We played both Testing Facility and Smuggler’s Tunnel
in back-to-back games at Escape Chronicles. The game masters were accommodating
and helpful in every way. The set design
was appropriate to the themes in both rooms and especially impressive in
Smuggler’s Tunnel. The puzzles were also aligned to the storyline of the rooms.
We especially enjoyed the creativity of the puzzles in Testing Facility. The
game flow procceeded smoothly overall thanks to helpful and timely hints from
our game masters.
Cons: There were a
few puzzles in both rooms that were overly convoluted, requiring a few too many
steps or logical leaps to solve. In other cases, we found puzzles that we were
able to work around in some way that led our game on a different trajectory
than the game designers intended. Most of these issues can be fixed with a few
minor adjustments. Our advice to the designers/owners is to carefully observe
future players and note which puzzles players need hints to solve. Those are
the problem areas that need to be fixed in future games. A good game should be
perfectly solvable without any hints. We all get stuck sometimes and need a
little help. But a puzzle that requires the same hint over and over again
reveals a problem in design logic or puzzle execution.
Despite the issues mentioned above that caused us to fail to
escape on time from Testing Facility, we definitely recommend Escape
Chronicles. The creativity of the puzzles, the set design, the helpfulness of
the game masters and the enjoyable storylines made for an overall good
experience. Bring your friends to Escape Chronicles!
