Challenges East Lansing Adventure Escape Rooms — Attraction in Meridian Charter Township

Challenges East Lansing would rather have you search a room than solve a well-thought-out puzzle, and this holds it back from being a really great escape room (my conclusion after 2 rooms, your milage may vary). Good puzzles provide information that direct players to use the room to eliminate possible answers such that they can arrive at a solution. Puzzles often extend the escape room narrative, which helps draw you into the story line.

You know when you have a good puzzle when the solution is revealed to you and your thought is "I should have known that!" and you're slightly disappointed in yourself for not making the necessary connections.

Unfortunately, Challenges is lacking in puzzles of this style. Often, the answer is to just look harder around the room - because they've hidden the answer in an obscure place that you were not directed by a clue to look in (although truth be told, Shipwrecked is better in this respect than Sparty). So after finishing a room, you're not really all that disappointed when you discover the combo to a lock was just printed somewhere you didn't happen to look.

Here's an example from the Sparty-Green room (SPOILER ALERT):

We had one lock that we could not open, and we did not seemingly have any piece of information that would have helped us. We asked for a clue from the Gamemaster, which said something like "Some people like to put their pride on their team pennants." We look up to the pennants on the wall, there are small numbers on a few of them, we enter those numbers into the lock, and it opens. In the game, we assumed we just missed a clue or something that would have directed us there.

After the game, we asked the Gamemaster: how would we have known to look at the pennants to get those numbers? How would we have known the order? Their answer was "Oh you'd just have to look at them and notice." There were many puzzles like this in the Sparty-Green room, and I got the same answer when I asked about one of the puzzles in the Shipwreck room as well. This was a disappointing answer: (1) We didn't miss anything, besides looking intently at things that were up high (which you are told in the orientation objects up high are not necessary, so you tend not to look there) and (2) there were so many numbers on the wall in various places - there was really no good reason to prefer numbers on pennants over numbers elsewhere. Afterwards, we weren't even upset that we didn't make it out of the room in time (we were a few seconds short) - the "puzzles" just weren't engaging.

Now puzzles sometimes have to be obvious and simply based on powers of observation - often times the first puzzle in a room is like this so it can steer you towards the clues that shape your experience. But at Challenges, its as if few of those steering clues that extend the narrative ever show up - and you're simply flipping all the furniture in the room or counting the coins to see if you missed something.

This is a shame because in other areas Challenges is great. It has some sophisticated technology to play with, it has a large and gorgeous space, the people are great. But puzzles really make the game, so I can't give them a high rating.

I post this not to bring their score down (I'll probably still go back and play the rest of their rooms). I just hope they'll take this advice into account when...

The escape room itself was absolutely stunning! I’ve been to 3 different places that do escape rooms and this one was by far the most detailed, and had the most creative hiding places for clues. I thought the coolest aspect of it all was that it wasn’t just finding codes and numbers, there were a ton of physical organizational puzzles as well! Move something in the right place, boom, something opens! I would love to give it 5 stars, but unfortunately, the game master was the worst game master I’ve ever had in any escape room I’ve been at. If you’re going to come here, and Amber is your game master, just save yourself the frustration and go home. First off, we arrived exactly at the reservation time. One of Amber’s first comments to our group was “when a place says you need to be there 15 minutes early, you should probably get there 15 minutes early.” There’s a way you say commentary like that to a paying customer, and that was not it. Then proceeded to say we may get 15 minutes of our time cut out as a result. That didn’t end up happening, as there was literally only one other group than us the entire time we were there. Amber also consistently gave information that was incorrect or not helpful. When I read allowed several answers we had to clues, there were a few times she said an answer was incorrect. So, we’d spend 15 minutes… to find it was the answer she said was incorrect, was in fact, correct. She also at several points gave us “helpful hints” that were more like describing what we were already in the process of doing. Also, I’ve never been to an escape room where they don’t let you know when you have the right answer if you’ve found it, like after we said the correct answer out loud, every other game master I’ve ever had gave us a “yes that’s correct!” Or something. Her final commentary was snide in how she worded that we should have used all the hints. Overall, Amber needs to work on her people skills, and her game master skills. Will be walking out the door if I walk in...

Poor customer service. A few of our group had pulled things that they shouldn't have that were supposed to be permanently fixed. Three drawers to a cabinet were pulled out to see if there was a clue underneath. None of these were glued or locked. Some things in the room were messed up previously and moved and we also got reprimanded for those items too. Worker, hopefully not the owner, came in at the end and said he had to close the room down for an hour, was super passive aggressive and made our otherwise fun evening rather unpleasant. I understand it's frustrating that things get moved that shouldn't. Acting the way he did at the time and fashion was completely unacceptable. There was no reservation after us and they closed in an hour so there's no reason to threaten that he lost money because he had to shut the room down. Also, making $225 an hour on a room that is overbooked and complaining about someone messing up a bad hot glue job is a joke. Find other rooms, there are plenty in town. If you can't find any message me and I'll point you in a...