Escape Hunt Houston — Attraction in Houston

Our group of 6 did the emperor’s jewel escape room.

The experience was the worst I’ve ever had at an escape room, nothing critically awful happened but the quality was pretty abysmal.

To start, many of the puzzles were broken which made them trivial or needing help from the game master to complete, such as needing a mirror to see a lever behind a window, but the bars had been removed so you could just stick your head through without a mirror and see the lever. Many others were broken and hadn’t been repaired as well. Things that clearly used to move and react when you solved a puzzle never activated and instead the game master released the items remotely when it looked like you’d done the right thing.

Others weren’t logical at all but just put in to eat up time it seemed. This isn’t the puzzle, but imagine if a puzzle just had a rubix cube and you’d need to solve it to move on. We hit something similar and had to ask the GM to skip it since no one in our group knew how to do it, and there wasn’t anything we were missing.

The atmosphere was awful, the top is open and there isn’t sound insulation, so the entire time we were in our Japanese themed room we were hearing screaming from other guests and game show sounds from the room over, so loud we actually couldn’t hear the prompts from our speaker, or the sound clues that went off when we solved a puzzle. We often solved a puzzle, didn’t know we did it correctly, kept trying new things only to get bored and go check something else and find random drawers were now open, and we weren’t sure what we did to open them.

At the end we solved all the puzzles with a few minutes to spare and about four clues from the GM. But three of those clues were for silly reasons, like not having the skill to unlock the first puzzle, missing something hidden on the floor out of sight, and not knowing what to do with a tool that was given to us with no hints, and the expectation that the guests should just know what this artifact was used for historically.

Additionally, it seems others have found these puzzles too hard in the past so they’ve begun putting pieces of tape on parts with numbers, but it looks tacky and doesn’t follow the theme.

Lastly and probably the worst part about it was the host and experience. We signed our wavers and started, the host said don’t break anything and led us into the starting room. A very short 20 second sound clip played to set the scene (which we couldn’t hear over the other rooms sounds) and then we started. After we finished the door opened and we left and no one greeted us or talked to us, I found the host and asked him what’s next and he said we can leave.

In the past the host has given us our times, let us know how we did, what we missed or what we got stuck on, asked for feedback, thanked us for coming. Maybe answered a question or two about the puzzles or room, but this time they didn’t interact at all, so this review is my only way to give feedback.

I highly recommend everyone skip Escape Hunt and find another escape room in town until they fix the broken puzzles, the immersion and atmosphere issues, improve puzzle selections, and improve their customer service...

Incredibly disappointed. 8 of my friends and I decided to do the “Houston We’ve Had a Problem” escape room here. The skill levels were mixed with 5 of us having done escape rooms before and the other 4 being newbies. We knew ahead of time that this would be hard and would have been completely okay if it was just a hard to solve room. I Truly wish this was the issue. In truth, from the moment the door closed we had issues that had nothing to do with the difficulty of the room. To start, we spent about 10 minutes trying to communicate with each other by yelling through the door because the headset that was supposed to be there wasn’t. When we finally called for help, not only was it made clear that the “game master” had clearly NOT been paying any attention, but we then had to wait for her to go retrieve the appropriate equipment that STILL DIDNT WORK. At which point we were given poorly (read: barely) functioning walkie talkies. We struggled through this game not because of the challenges in front of us but because we were unable to properly communicate with one another. In total we lost at least 15 minutes yelling through the door and swapping out equipment, for which they only reset 5 minutes of the game for us. The only explanation the game master gave us for this error was that she “didn’t know who reset the room” which for $40 a piece (a collective $350.28) that is NOT an acceptable excuse. We spent the entire game yelling into walkie talkies that we couldn’t hear each other through. Other issues included doors being unlocked already that should have been locked and an honest doubt that the actual keypad to escape worked at all because it didn’t light up red like all the others. For the money we spent we should have been offered profuse apologies and a refund. This place is not being run well and I DO NOT recommend it. Me and my friends are going to keep doing escape rooms but since this one can’t even get the basics of the room to function properly, there is no way we’ll be waisting our...

We had a full group of 6 and played the murder mystery game. Half of the props didn't work or had malfunctions. One prop that was to remain locked until we completed certain steps was already open at the start of the game and it caused confusion.

In other games we have played, doors and chests will pop open after completing puzzle steps. None of the props here did any of that. After completing a puzzle there wasn't any clear indication of the next thing to do.

There was a point where the game master actually had to walk into our game and physically hand us a clue because a chest wouldn't pop open. There was another instance where the game master told us to pry open a small door so it could open. I assume it was malfunctioning as well.

There was another puzzle that involved changing the lighting in the room to find answers but it seemed like the lights weren't set up properly or had been slightly changed. This created A Lot of confusion and wasted time

Overall we all still had a good time and enjoyed some of the puzzles. However for the price we paid, I cannot recommend the murder mystery room. I may be willing to give it another chance and try a different room but I think we would more than likely go to a...