Hourglass Escapes Seattle — Attraction in Seattle

I don’t know what the disconnect is between my unpopular opinion of this escape room (negative) and the popular opinion (overwhelmingly positive), but I’ve done 10 escape rooms and Hourglass Escapes, specifically the “Rise of the Mad Pharaoh” variant, is by far the worst escape room I’ve ever experienced. I will be intentionally vague in some aspects of this review in order to maintain the integrity of the attraction.

First, let’s talk about what was good about the experience. The hosts were friendly, the place was clean, and they didn’t have a “leave your cell phone in a locker” policy, which is one of my pet peeves with most escape rooms. This made the difference between me being able to participate and not, as I was on-call for work and did not have the luxury of leaving my phone behind. Thanks for treating me like an adult, seriously.

Now let’s talk about what needs improvement.

First and foremost, there are bugs/defects in some of the puzzles. I found it strange that not only did the hosts tell us we had unlimited hints, but they started giving us unsolicited hints without us asking. All but one of the “hints” they gave us were actually just workarounds for the errors in the escape room. The most common class of error were literal defects in their puzzle system (technology related). This was especially annoying because it kept happening over and over again in different stages of the escape room. The second main class of error was the puzzle design itself. There was a major section of the escape room that we skipped, which we weren’t even aware that we did until after we escaped and the host informed us. We were able to skip it because it was entirely unnecessary, and therefore, not properly designed. So in my opinion, the “unlimited hints” policy is a euphemism for “our escape room is problematic and we haven’t taken the time to fix it.” The occasional issue is fine and expected, but there was some kind of malfunction with every single phase of this escape room.

The next massive problem is the breadth and depth of the room. This particular room requires at least 5 people to reserve. However, during the experience, we were largely bottlenecked down to 3 or 4 people because there’s simply not enough for 5 people to do. We had 6 people and during our 45 minute escape, 2-3 people in our group would periodically sit idle about half of the time just to avoid having too many cooks in the kitchen. There wasn’t even enough working space for 5 people - we’d often run out of space on desks, tables, and so on.

The variety of the puzzles are easily the worst I’ve ever seen in an escape room. All of the puzzles, literally all of them, were code cracking. There were zero exploratory secrets or skill-based solutions.

The immersion was also the worst I’ve ever seen. There’s a reason why they have rules for not dismantling furniture, telling you not to look on the floor, and telling you not to look above your head. No, I’m not making this up. “Clues” are mostly laminated pieces of paper that were printed on an injket. “Rare artifacts” are random items from IKEA and AliExpress. Almost nothing was hidden anywhere. You were expected to write notes on a terrible device that makes zero sense in the context of the theme, and these devices malfunctioned more than they functioned. Locks were overly simplistic combination locks that looked like kids toys, pastel colors and all. They explicitly disallowed brute forcing locks (just to be clear, I mean trying combinations, not physically breaking them) which is not only immersion breaking (there’s a reason why a rational human being would brute force these simple locks in the context of the storyline), but again signals to me that it’s a poorly designed puzzle. Frankly, the escape room was just tacky and cheap.

I would not recommend this escape room to anyone, not even first timers. Maybe the other rooms at Hourglass Escapes are better, but if this one is any indication of the quality, it would be a very solid “no” from me.

I’d be happy to share constructive criticism...

As someone who’s done a few escape rooms prior and would consider myself “experienced”, here’s my review of The Mystery of Innsmouth with a team of 7.

Room Theme: Described as a dingy hotel, the first room greets you as a hotel lobby. It’s nicely decorated and captures an initial creepy vibe. The rest of the rooms feel disjointed from the hotel theme. It’s all dimly lit and there are few decorative only pieces that aren’t a part of the puzzles. Overall, I wasn’t overly wowed compared to the others I’ve been to, but it’s not bad.

Puzzles: The game listing says it accommodates 2-8 players, and the game host tells you that not all puzzles need to be solved linearly and you can split up. I would say this game is best played with at max a team of 5, but preferably 3-4 given how simplistic the puzzles are. I came with a team of 7, and it was a very chaotic experience with everyone solving things at different times so that you sometimes feel like you missed out on part of the experience. The puzzles themselves aren’t super challenging. Once you get the general idea, the end goal is very direct. No puzzle left us stumped or required true deeper thinking. It’s very match-and-go. For beginners or less experienced, you may enjoy this. But no puzzle impressed me, felt new, or left us feeling proud to have solved it. For those looking for a greater challenge, I would choose another room. All locks and keys were easy to use. As far as fun effects, it’s mostly just drawers that pop open, and nothing very innovative.

Storytelling The story is a bit long-winded and boring. The ending left us feeling like, “oh.. that’s it? we’re done?” There’s a lot of talking over a speaker that is meant to feel immersive but falls flat and also feels like a waste of time. While designed to feel haunted and creepy, there are no jump-scares and the room itself is not “scary”.

Overall, I think this room is fine for beginners, but will leave you disappointed if you fall under the “experienced escape room enthusiast” category looking for a challenge. We finished the game around 48 minutes with no hints and left...

Where do I even begin?!

Our GM Brian K. was absolutely wonderful, we showed up four minutes after our time slot of 10:30 since finding parking took a bit longer than we anticipated, and he was ready and waiting for us as soon as we got to the door.

Mystery at Innsmouth was our very first escape room ever, and we booked it as we all love the Arkham Horror universe and Cthulhu mythos. Our group enjoys playing Mansions of Madness and other Fantasy Flight games, and this escape room was 100% on brand. If you, family, or friends love anything related to the Cthulhu mythos, this escape room is a must play.

The set design was beautiful, the puzzles and craftsmanship of props used to solve were absolutely ingenious without being too difficult to figure out, though our group was so stubborn we refused to ask for a hint.

Brian wasn't one to let us suffer for long, and provided the tiniest of hints by replying one of the audio clips we heard at the beginning of the game, and it was just the extra nudge we needed to snowball into the other puzzles we'd managed to complete. We still felt that we figured it out ourselves, which was absolutely icing on the cake as I read some comments about GMs being too helpful (which we wouldn't have minded in the end) but Brian was absolutely perfect at gauging and running our experience like a pro.

The props for Innsmouth are exquisite, and the satisfying ding of a bell when a puzzle is solved gave our group a high we rode for the rest of the day. We made it out right around 60 minutes, and I wish I was able to experience this room for the first time again as it was absolutely magical.

Mad respect for Brian, he did a phenomenonal job beind-the-scenesing a room where five nerds were having the time of their lives oogling puzzles for so long it's a miracle we managed to...