EDscapade Games — Attraction in San Jose

I've been on an escape room binge with my partner for the past year. Done a bunch in Toronto, San Jose and one in Monterey Bay. This place is LEAGUES above the rest. We played Battle of Xu’Qua first, which is the most perfectly fine tuned beginner experience I've ever known and was really fun for us though we're already somewhat experienced now. I think it's the first time we were absolutely psyched from start to end. Our GM, Marissa, is so talented! EDscapade genuinely has GMs who actually feel like they control the game (as it should be). She guided us just right that the pacing felt perfect. She interacted with both of us in a way that was goofy and funny. She kept us immersed, engaged, focused, but having fun! Marissa is by far the best GM I've ever been lucky enough to get at an escape room. You really made our day with Battle of Xu’Qua, thank you so much!

GMs make/break an escape room. Many places, the GMs are under-trained and have no idea how to hype up a quiet couple that is us lol. I've often embarrassed myself by cursing to high heavens throughout escape rooms (always forgetting they can hear me) about just how bad it is. I never had a single complaint for the two rooms we did at EDscapade. The secret lies in how the games are operated. The puzzles at EDscapade (the two we did at least) were manually operated. So the GM had 100% say on whether something was activated and we didn't have those awkward moments where we're told, "you need to push that sideways a bit more so the mechanism works," after 5 minutes of standing around doing nothing. We had none of the annoying experiences we have at every other escape room we've been to. Both rooms were built intuitively and safely. There's nowhere you can get your hand caught, fall, trip, or feel you'll end up with a splinter etc. The materials they use for the rooms, the design itself is geared towards it being fun and safe.

Anyway, the next day, we went to another escape room in the area, which was a mistake, because EDscapade had now spoiled us. We returned to EDscapade the day after that to play Hostage. We both loved that one too. Brennon has such great reviews about him already, so I was pointing at the staff board being like, "Oh, we got Brennon! That's Brennon!" Brennon and Marissa were masters at setting the tone and making the experience great for us from start to end. It's the first place I've felt I was in the room with the GM, instead of them being the equivalent of a glorified paper hint.

Staff recommended escape rooms in LA, because they have a lot of experience based escape rooms like EDscapade as opposed to static puzzle rooms. The price is the same for both types and yet I'd never recommend anything other than ones like you can find at EDscapade. I'm guessing this might be due to LA's wealth of actors/performers. I ASSURE YOU, the majority of us are going to enjoy an interactive puzzle experience with our friends, family and colleagues, not a boring puzzle to puzzle room with poorly placed doors that fling open too hard and hit your face :].

If you're going with a bunch of friends or just as a couple like we did, pick this place!! Please trust this poor, normie sod who has spent way too much money on escape rooms alone, and finally found a good one! I actually went to one with my partner's mum recently (her first time). It was the typical puzzle to puzzle, and a boring experience. I really wish we'd taken her to EDscapade instead.

I don't recall this verbatim, but the reason this place is called EDscapade is because many of their staff are students, and the people who manage them/owners of EDscapade etc are educators. So they have a network to have students work as staff at the escape room and they also help them with their tuition costs and training costs through additional bonuses from good reviews. I think it's pretty amazing and unique. The fact our GMs were either in HS or off to college surprised me, 'cos they're such naturals.

TL;DR - EDscapade is innovative and creative in ways that truly deserve your precious...

Having done over 55 escape rooms with my fiance, I thought would chime in with my review

Going to a new escape room always feels a bit unsure as everyone is waiting for someone else to jump in and report as being first has you coming into the unknown, this goes double for us living in the Bay Area where we have some really strong room contenders. We played "Hostage" (which is their only room available at the time) which is your classic "serial killer abducts you and you have to get out" scenario which you've seen multiple times. I can see a number of enthusiast roll their eyes at the theme as it ranks up there with "rob a place to steal a diamond." However its key to note that scary/creepy rooms in the bay are almost non existent (I'll go into how scary the room is later)

Hostage is a greater starter room with some neat puzzles in a well dressed setting. Superb use of lighting and sound really push the room over the edge and out of the "run down killer hideout" setups this is pretty strong given what they work with.

Puzzles/Tech

Tech wise the room is mainly locks and keys however there are some very surprising ways to get said items and some "offbeat" door/panel unlocks that I will not spoil and neat little effects I haven't seen in rooms before. Progress is fairly linear however there are at least 2 different "bonus" puzzles that you can work on that help flesh out the storyline and even unlock an alternate "back" exit. In terms of puzzle quality the logic flow made sense, the "aha" moments were there and that rush of feeling smart was a plenty while there are some classic escape room puzzle tropes present which resulted in us solving them more out of familiarity then logic our team had to dip into the hint well a bit for some help. Adding on to the experience was our GM playing the serial killer giving us advice over the PA system that would come in and make snide comments whenever we did something useless which added some fun spice to the experience.

Accessibility

I'm used to playing games with people with certain physical and learning disabilities. For one my fiance is half deaf while I play with other members who suffer from claustrophobia, epilepsy, color blindness and dyslexia. The room and reviews say the room is dark which I do not think its the best way to describe things. It's not "dark" in the sense that the room is pitch black and its hard to make things out but more so the lighting is obscured as its colored to add to mood. There is one puzzle where normal lighting is needed and its provided. Those with vision problems I would suggest talking to the staff before booking the room to ask what sort of accommodations can be provided. The I did ask the team to lower the background volume a bit in for my fiance and the two of us fond no issues with communicating with each other during our time.

Scare Factor

I do not do well with scary movies and get frightened very easily and while I love a good creepy room my limits are tested when any mention of "live actor" are brought up. With that said you can imagine the nerves I felt when I saw "live actor" in the waiver. This goes double when the two of us were asked to provide a safe word (which is a great practice). I'm happy to report that I was able to get through just fine but the scary stuff could have been in the extra exit that we did not see.

Hostage scratches an itch that not too many rooms in the Bay Area hit that has a consistent flow, great set, lighting and sound that kept us engaged. It's a great first room from this company and we eagerly hope to see more. This is now on our shortlist for rooms to recommend for people...

Super sad to be leaving this review because we did enjoy BOX and Hostage… but the last two interactions for Nursery and HOPE have been so awful.

Giving one extra star for the good times with BoX and Hostage, the rest of this 1 star review is for the other two:

Nursery- as they were giving us the disclaimers, they kept emphasising how scary it would be and we would need to consent to all sorts of things, including being dragged. I mentioned I have PTSD related to specifically being dragged and asked if they can do it another way (eg tap my shoulder and guide me wherever), and they said no. I have no other issues with the rest of the disclaimers and horror theme… so this seemed discriminatory purely based on PTSD regarding a very specific action that I had already asked for an accommodation for and they refused. The rest of my group was going in to play, and I asked if I could sit in the lobby or in the control room … and they said no. This was 10 pm and they were just going to let a girl sit out in the dark at night. Awful. I didn’t leave a review then bc I didn’t feel like noting for the entire public about my PTSD, but here we are.

HOPE - we went for my birthday and it was such a let down that we had to go do another one somewhere else to make up for how bad this was. I wish I could have that hour and money back.

First off, the game is apparently still in Beta, but that wasn’t clear to us. Many things in the room didn’t work (eg lights didn’t turn on so we just fumbled in the dark for a while). The props felt very janky and unfinished… something fell apart before we opened it the “correct” way so we were able to see it out of order … but that didn’t matter because there aren’t any real puzzles in this game anyway!

The whole thing is a thought experiment, there are no correct answers… there seemed no point to them splitting the group up, as we didn’t get to see each other’s answers anyway… and the answers, again, didn’t matter so it all was pointless.

The audio wasn’t super clear so we had no idea what was being said most times, including the final instruction to be let out of the room… so one team had to just sit and wait until the time was up.

Everything is said as a rhyme, but it seems our game master wasn’t familiar with the script yet, so they seemed super nervous and stumbled through the scripts and made it, unfortunately, even harder to understand.

All in all, super disappointing experiences the past two times. What a way to waste part of a birthday...