The Escape Room

The escape room craze has been sweeping the nation as of late, and since I heard about them a few years ago I've wanted to try one out. So, recently for my birthday I decided I was finally going to do it. For anyone living under a rock an escape room is a themed group exercise wherein you and a crowd of people try to figure out, through a series of clues and puzzles, how to "escape" said room usually with an hour time limit.

Sounds cool right?

So I rounded up my wife and a group of our friends to try it out. There are three escape rooms in Evansville, three! We finally decided on Escape Evansville, and booked the Pirates On the Ohio room they also have an Enchanted Library and Kidnapped theme rooms. Booking was fairly easy, all done online we just paid for 7 out of 8 available tickets and our friends paid us back when we met up ($25 person). The night finally came and we set off for adventure! Inside Escape Evansville, and I assume in all escape rooms, the first thing they show you is a room full of all of the different combination locks there are to get you ready, there's a lot. After a quick prep session we where locked away in the room, in this particular room you start caged locked in a "cell" and go from there (I will keep this spoiler free for anyone who may want to try it out, the room description explains that's where you start at.)

My main concern with Escape Evansville was production value. Would I feel like I was in the bowels of a pirate ship trying to escape with my life? Well, the theme was definitely there, pirate props everywhere. I didn't really feel like I was on a ship, but it was good. The puzzles really brought the experience up for me. There are lots of them and they're really engaging. It took us a little bit to get started, as we couldn't figure out how to get out of the cell for the first 15 minutes, we only had an hour. We asked for one of our four hints and it was painfully obvious what we should have done as soon as we read it on the monitor, palm to face moment.

You see, while you're in the room someone is watching you the whole time. If you get stuck you can ask for hints, normally you get three but you get an extra if you check in on social media. There is a monitor in one corner of the room the hints are typed to. Anyway, we finally got out of the cell and then it was just a fast paced fun puzzle solving adventure. Things like locked cabinets you need to open that lead to other puzzles which usually involve trying to figure out the combination of the next lock or finding secret locations and information in the room that lead to the next conundrum. It can be really thinky, and I love that. We got stuck on the last puzzle with just a few minutes left, in a sweat inducing last push we figured it out, with time quickly ticking away my friend Ronnie RAN over to the exit door typing in the solution, with us following close behind and with mere seconds left the door swung open...5 seconds was all we had on the clock...WHEW!

The guy watching us came out of the door across the hall and congratulated us on a narrow escape. What a blast!!

Final Thoughts:

I highly recommend anyone to try an escape room. It really is a lot of fun. I've only been to this one, but as soon as we where done everyone was ready to go back again to try another. Really a one of a kind experience. Here in town there is Escape Evansville, Locked Evansville, and Breakout Games. Try it out!