I may have been Bess in a former life because I am absolutely in love with Houdini. Therefore, every time I’m in a city with a Houdini themed room I must play it. This however, was not my favorite Houdini room. Actually it could’ve been called, “Any old magician’s office,” since I didn’t really feel as though Houdini inspired anything in it. I know we were looking for shackles and a straightjacket, but Houdini was so much more than those two props.
The room itself was spacious and well decorated. The study looked like a real study and so forth. The set pieces were nicer than the typical Ikea furnished room. The lighting and color scheme was pleasant. However, I didn’t really feel immersed in a Houdini-esque world. It felt like a really nice study that probably belonged to a magician.
The puzzle design was average. There was little to no technology, which is fine, but the puzzle creativity was a little lacking especially when considering the theme. There was one really fun “Aha” moment, but other than that it all felt a little overwhelming and chaotic. There was a little searching involved. There was a lot of solving simple yet tedious puzzles both physical and mentally. There were two puzzles that stood out as far as being difficult for the sake of having something difficult in the room, one of which required prior knowledge. (Maybe playing chess is common knowledge, but I don’t think it is.) My biggest problem with the room was that amount of people they stuffed in it. It was way too crowded and even with the busy work there wasn’t enough to occupy everyone simultaneously.
Live Escape Room & Haunt Reviews 
Hi Christine,
Great to hear that you recently paid us a visit. It is always interesting to hear from our guests who are escape room fanatics. It is disappointing to hear to hear that you may not have thoroughly enjoyed your Game Room experience, but we are always grateful for any feedback that our guests have.
As far as the design of the room, our intention was not to create an office environment for Houdini, but to instead show a period appropriate game parlor that was set up as a test of wits by Houdini. We do feel that there are many thematic elements and props that advance this narrative. This also heavily influenced the type of puzzles in the room and the number of traditional games thus employed. The minimal technology utilized was also intentional to preserve the look and feel we were seeking. From time to time we do hear the argument about the chess puzzle requiring prior knowledge, and can certainly understand how if you are not familiar with chess that it can feel this way. However, there is a relatively straight forward way to solve that particular puzzle without knowing anything about chess.
It is true that our rooms are not built like many “Seek and Find” rooms. We specifically chose to design our experiences as puzzle centric without lots of time spent searching for objects and codes. This may not be everyone’s preferred type of game play, and we are always happy to answer any of our guests’ questions about gameplay/structure before their visit to avoid this kind of disappointment.
We were a bit surprised to hear that you felt “stuffed in.” Our rooms are quite large compared to most escape room venues and we routinely host groups of up to 14 in the Game Room. Of course anyone who would not like to share their experience or game space with others is able to avoid this by either purchasing all of the tickets for a particular room/timeslot or by contacting us to set up a Private Booking.
We sincerely hope that you will visit us again to try out our other experiences, such as the Oval Office.
Thank you for visiting!
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Thank you for your response. I happen to dislike searching in a room, it wasn’t a criticism just an observation. Same with the comment about being low tech. I love well done first gen rooms. Being low tech is never a complaint, just letting my readers know what to expect. Also I wrote that your space is large but it actually felt a little cramped with so many people moving around in the beginning however that comment is more about the game not having enough to occupy everyone and less about elbow room in the space. I personally would hate to play that game with 14 people even if they were all my best friends because we wouldn’t have enough to do. The beauty of my blog is that each and every review is done by me and reflects my personal opinion, which not everyone agrees with. Thank you for pointing out you do Private Bookings. I didn’t realize you offered private bookings without buying out all tickets. I appreciate that option, as I prefer private games to playing with strangers 99% of the time. I don’t get to your neck of the woods often, but if I do I would love to play your other games.
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