Escape Rhode Island — Attraction in Providence

This review is a two-for one because when we visited we did two different escape room(s). Technically, one escape room and one outdoor escape activity.

First, the actual traditional escape room we did was The Bunker. The immersion in the room was neat from the start, needing you to use your physicality to...well I don't want to spoil what you needed the physicality for but you needed to stand in a particular spot for particular reason...you play it to figure it out. The only thing I did not really like about the start of the room is (and they do tell you this pretty clearly, in their defense) that you can only start in two spaces without looking anywhere else in the escape room. I myself got confused because when they were giving hints it seemed to hint at something else in a space which was not the starting two spaces, so the Game Master had to come in to tell us to stay in the two spaces, which is non-immersive and feels very not escape room-like when you're used to just getting your hands on anything and everything you can, not being limited. Despite that small hiccup, everything after that was pretty smooth sailing - only one thing was accidentally left unlocked but otherwise, the puzzles were very neat and were very fun to work with a partner on.

Second, we did the outdoor escape room "The Zachariah Conundrum" which was a very interesting experience. You are given a fairly hefty briefcase to carry around that has not only a lock on it (your first puzzle) but also a ton of locks inside it. It was a cool experience being able to walk around the city of Providence, going to different landmarks and other special locales to solve puzzles. Just as a fair warning, this is a long experience. It took us about 3 hours, and it's a ton of walking, and a good chunk of it is uphill. Be prepared with water and make sure you are able to move around for significant periods of time. The ending is a little goofy, but the overall experience was fun and I found it to be a moderate to easy difficulty, especially since they give you access to two hints if needed (and then the solution if you still struggle).

This has been our like 4th total experience at this location and we keep coming back because the people there are great and the rooms they continue to create are always quality. Check it out...

I wish I could leave something like 3.8 stars. I'm very conflicted about writing this review.

On the one hand, I had a ton of fun and I would absolutely go back. The people were extremely nice and as far as I could tell (this was my only Escape experience) they had a very cool set of scenarios. The puzzles were challenging and the ones that worked (more on that below) were for the most part quite clever.

There weren't many puzzles that I felt were difficult to solve just for the sake of being difficult (though there was one in the room that I would re-do if I were them, as it really wasn't clear)

On the other hand, in the room my friends and I booked (Ex Machina) three puzzles were broken (I wont say exactly how since I don't want to give anything about the room away!) but sufficed to say they functioned as red herrings throughout our time there. (We didn't solve the room, but were within 4 steps of doing so, I can't help but feel if the broken puzzles had functioned properly and we had been able to stop considering them as "pending solution" we might have actually completed the room, which is frustrating!)

Additionally annoying was that our operator had trouble determining what we were stuck on when we needed a hint because we had circumvented these broken puzzles (if a puzzle that produced a key was broken the lock the key in question would unlock was left unlocked at the start... so from the very beginning we were able to "solve" some puzzles that we shouldn't have been able to if the room was 100% functional.) Due to this confusing uncertainty about what we had solved versus what we had not our operator kept giving us the same hint for the last ~20 minutes or so but the hint was for a puzzle that was broken and we did not actually need to complete the room. This wasn't his fault and when he finally came to debrief us we finally all understood what had happened, but it doesn't totally remove the slight bittersweet fact that we may have proceeded further had we not been misdirected to a puzzle we had (unbeknownst to us) circumvented.

Overall, I would go back, and I had a ton of fun (as did, I believe, my compatriots) but I would have gladly waited a few more minutes to start if it meant the room was...

I've been to this escape room twice. There's hardly a lobby. I went with a large group that had booked the space in its entirety for the evening. There were about 30 of and we were squished with limited mobility. They could really use a bigger space.

Room Clues: Rather than provide clues over a speaker or send a staff member into the room with the group like other escape rooms, clues are displayed on one monitor in the space at set intervals throughout the hour. They were displaced temporarily and accompanied by a notification sound. This was frustrating for two reasons:

If you happened to be in a room that incorporated multiple rooms, you needed to run back to the start to check the screen for clues. The clues provided a set time intervals were often not relevant by the time they showed up on our screen. In other words, at least one participant was running to the start to check the screen for a clue we no longer needed, wasting time.

Room: In the particular room that I completed there was one puzzle that required physical dexterity, which was frustrating and felt out of place. It's been my understanding that escape rooms are more about brains than brawn.

Narrative/Theme: The narrative suggested there was information we were meant to find as part of our escape. There was no closure to this narrative. The room was decorated according to the theme, which was believable and I appreciate that. However, we never actually found out what had happened to whom it was we were searching...