Puzzle Effect Escape Rooms - Denver — Attraction in Northglenn

Overall: Very enjoyable experience. The puzzles were clever and immersive. The rooms are well-designed and visually appropriate for their themes. Additionally, the rooms are quite large, the largest I have seen in escape rooms. The employees are enthusiastic and really good at providing clues appropriately - they have an "immersive cluing" system where they send you clues as they think you need them, without you having to ask. That's very helpful when you aren't sure how fast you should be progressing, as it can be hard to figure out how much content is left in a room. Our game master, Zay, was quite good at judging whether we needed a little nudge or if we just needed to figure it out ourselves. They also allow overtime, so you don't need to worry about not finishing and missing out on room content.

Our Puzzle - Grim Stacks: Puzzles (No Spoilers): The puzzle we tried was Grim Stacks. Our game master was Zay. The puzzles were quite good, very complex and well-designed. I particularly enjoyed a puzzle that involved listening for sounds to find a pattern. I did think that one of the puzzles could have used a bit better signalling in the puzzle - there's an obscure connection you have to make from a list to books to colors that wasn't intuitive. However, the "immersive cluing" that they do kept us from getting frustrated without just solving the puzzle for us, so even that was still a good experience.

While many of the puzzles did involve finding codes for locks, they all had multiple stages and were quite complex. No finding codes on the wall and entering them blindly in this room!

Recommended Tools: Definitely would recommend a notebook for this one. A flashlight was helpful for our group because of eyesight issues, but many people would be just fine without one, as the room was very well-lit. No puzzles that were only hard because the room was dim here!

Accessibility: At least one person in your group should be able to ascend 3 steps up and 3 steps down to access a new room, but everyone else can use a normal door with no steps. (They could probably accommodate by having the game master open when appropriate; they seemed very flexible.) As it says on their website, if you have people who cannot stand for long periods, chairs are either in the room already as props or will be brought in on request. Almost all rooms are fully wheelchair accessible and solvable - check their FAQ for an up-to-date list.

Other Games Overview: As a bonus, probably because we came on a slow day and nobody was booked after us, we were allowed to do a brief tour of some other rooms. Every one looked gorgeous (and large), particularly the Curse on the Emerald Seas room (pirate theme) and the The Path room (Zen/Japanese theme). We were told that The Path actually has no locks at all, which sounds like an amazing experience, though it was the smallest room physically. Also, every room has easter eggs related to the room designer or Puzzle Effect employees. They design their own rooms in-house, which I feel really shines through in the quality of the rooms and the enthusiasm they have for...

Went for my birthday and this was so much fun! I think if I went again, I personally would choose one of the "Challenging" levels, we did the Path which was "More Challenging", if I didn't have people smarter than me in there with me I am not sure I would have ever gotten out lol, but it helps having different people having different ways of looking at things for sure. Teamwork will defiantly come in handy!

Kira was awesome and made sure we did get clues if we needed them at the perfect time, but not too soon to give us a chance to solve on our own. We finished with seven minutes to spare! We did have a few kiddos that were six years old with us and this room was not at all good for them. They kept asking for a task but I had no idea what to give them so they were kind of frustrated / board. I feel like there should not be a charge for children under a certain age if they are with an adult because they can't really contribute or enjoy it, at least not in the room we were in. The ten-year old with us did have fun though and was able to help more. I think maybe the Naughty Ned room, The Reel, or the Grim Stacks room might be more fun for kids, at least by going off solely what they looked like. Kira let us peek at the rooms not in use after we were done incase we come back, I really appreciated that.

I will definitely be back, honestly I wanted to just go right into another room to solve after we finished. Might be an idea for the business to offer a "flight" package, if you do two or three rooms on the same day in a row you get a discount? Or maybe a discount punch card? Something like that would be cool. Go check them out for a great,...

This puzzle room was fantastic! We did the pirate themed one and had an absolute blast. We played with four adults and a very clever fourth grader. The theming in here is really well done. The room felt super piratey and was spooky and fun. Think Jack Sparrow spooky, not actually scary and no jump scares so totally cool for the kiddos. Some of The clues change things in the room, possibly opening a container or causing something else in the room to become interactive and this was done in a way that felt really thoughtfully incorporated into the theme.

The clues were challenging enough to keep us puzzling and to make it difficult but never felt impossible or overly frustrating. There are a wide variety of clue types suited to various types of thinking and all of our group found meaningful ways to participate. Everyone got started in a wrong direction at some point and found that another group member had the key to the solution so it really works well for groups. They have a lovely hint system if you do get too stuck but we found that we didn't really need much in the way of hints. The difficulty was perfect for our group.

These guys are remarkably cool about phones in the room. They encourage you to take pictures and make it fun which I like. I'm not one to look things up in a puzzle room because you're only cheating yourself there but it's nice to have access to your phone's flashlight or not have to break health data collection on your smart watch. They've also been thoughtful about places to put your personal items so that your purse or whatever is still in the room with you but not in the way or obnoxious.

Shout out to our host Dez who was...