OMESCAPE San Jose — Attraction in San Jose

I've done over 100 escape rooms across San Francisco, Seattle, New Orleans, and Denver, and actively seek out and travel to the best escape rooms in the US. This review is catered mainly to jaded enthusiasts who are looking for new and interesting rooms even after doing hundreds of them (since that's what I am!)

Back one last time to Omescape - San Jose to do Joker's Asylum. This visit is especially bittersweet as Omescape was my first introduction to good escape rooms, and this is the last Omescape room in the bay area that I can do before they come out with new ones.

Joker's Asylum - Mid 3/5 (A decent room in the local area, ranked 73 out of 126 in my stack ranking of escape rooms I've done)

Joker's Asylum is one of Omescape's older games, and similar in quality to the other older games in this location (basically all of them in Sorceror's Sanctum) which at this point of my escape room career, would categorize as "mid-tier tech with mostly no combination locks, reasonable set, good puzzles, and not too much story" - reasonable rooms, but maybe a bit standard and outdated compared to their newer rooms. Still fun to do, but the rooms don't really provide anything particularly new or unique to an enthusiast who has seen the best in the US.

Joker's Asylum is touted as the hardest of the rooms in San Jose, though I think it's hard for bad reasons. The beginning of the room involves a group split and puzzles where you have to communicate with each other isolated in completely different rooms - while the mechanic is okay, the experience is marred by the communication mechanism being staticy and hard to hear what the other team is saying. I assume that this was to add flavor to the experience, but it just ended up being frustrating and tedious. We spent maybe 20 minutes stuck at the beginning of the game, and a good part of that just involved asking the other team to repeat themselves and talk slowly. Your experience with this room will likely depend on how easily you can get through this part - the rest of the room is fairly standard as far as Omescape rooms go so for the more contentious reviews of this room that is probably why.

Set - Similar to the older Omescape rooms, the set was a bit underwhelming, and you can think of this as a generic office set with custom posters and a few custom set pieces scattered around. While their newer rooms do a much better job of making you feel like you're actually in that setting, here you just feel like you're in an escape room, which is serviceable but a bit underwhelming after seeing gorgeous sets in their Sunnyvale locations and other escape rooms with good sets (13th gate in New Orleans being the canonical example of absurd sets).

Puzzles - The puzzles were the standard Omescape quality, and similar to their other rooms. Lots of escape room tropes, but reasonably implemented.

Story - The story sadly follows the standard escape room recipe of: "cool intro video, followed by no real progression or cinematic events" within the room itself. Unlike standard rooms, the puzzles felt a bit more tied into the story as they focused entirely on the Joker character and his past, state of mind, etc. This lore was appreciated despite there not being an active story in the room, and was probably above average going by the standards of when the room was created.

Player Recs - Given the split, your group ideally should have 2 people who are somewhat experienced in escape rooms (or at good at communicating their surroundings), and you should assign one per group. The room really isn't too bad past the first part so as with all my recs, enthusiasts should bring around the minimum count (5-6) and beginners can bring a bit more than that (7-9). The room can get a bit cramped though so beware

Personal Stats - Escaped in a group of 6 in 57 minutes...

My friends and I have done a lot of escape rooms, but this room, Dark Altar, was really disappointing. Some of the mechanisms were cool like the props opening up and things dropping, but we all agreed that some of the puzzles were not relevant to the theme and some, specifically the last one, was ridiculous. We had to ask for 3 clues for the last puzzle alone, not because it was too difficult, but because there was no clear hint, clue, or instruction on how to solve it. When we were given all 3 clues, we were no closer to solving it. Even when the game master explained it over the walkie talkie the first two times, there was no correlation with the clues we were give to solve it. The fact that the game master had to come into the room because she couldn't clearly explain her clue verbally over the walkie talkie means that there weren't adequate clues to solve the last puzzle. With the escape rate being less than 35%, I can almost guarantee that this specific puzzle has something to do with it. I understand wanting to boast about having a difficult escape room, but this low escape rate feels like it's due to poorly designed puzzles, not difficultly, especially because some puzzles were literally just typing one number into a keypad six times while others had you copy and paste shapes that are subjective. All in all, I think the staff should consider that their escape rates may be low because their puzzles are not offering the players sufficient information to solve them. Even when the game master explained how to solve the puzzle, we all agreed that there was no correlation with the clues we were given and the method she explained. I am sad to say we didn't enjoy our game because we felt like we didn't have what we needed...

Loved my experience here. The rooms were really well designed, and required a good amount of thought and puzzle solving skill to figure out.

There was always a member of the staff available for prompt help on a walkie-talkie, and they proactively monitored our progress to offer help if we were spending a bit too long or going in the wrong direction when figuring out a puzzle.

Some of the puzzles felt a bit obscure, but I believe we were a novice team doing a fairly advanced escape room, so it may have been our fault for missing some of the clues. We also had only 5 people in our team on a puzzle where the recommended number was 6-8 people, so that also kinda worked against us.

One thing I wish was better was the ambient lighting. While the darkness added to the air of mystery and sense of wonder, it was really hard to see some of the patterns and clues. Some clues would light up under a blacklight, but many others were just non-luminescent markings on wood or plastic that were hard to see. Maybe I personally need to eat more carrots, but we all had the same problem with the lack of light.

We failed to finish the whole room within 60 minutes, but the staff were kind enough to provide help with the puzzles at which we were stuck, while giving us just enough hints to help us complete the final room.

We had a really great experience, and I will return to try to succeed, next time, at another room here! Thank you,...