Quest Factor Escape Rooms — Attraction in Seattle

I've played a fairly large range of escape rooms in the Seattle area and this is undeniably the worst escape room experience I've ever had. If you read no other part of this review, I recommend that you explore to the other better designed escape rooms in the area.

We chose the Space Wars room, which they themselves have rated the hardest of their own escape rooms. However, I wouldn't even consider this a difficult escape room, it's a frustrating and poorly designed room intentionally predicated on removing the ability to communicate. The puzzles themselves are simplistic and overall feel like busy work, and they're frustrating because one group of players cannot actually talk to the others.

It's a room in which players are split between two rooms, and one group of players has a very low quality push to talk microphone as well as a camera into the other. The other group had no means to verbally communicate to us, what they were seeing or what feedback they had. Our group of players had significant difficulty in even understanding what we were trying to say to them, as the quality of the audio was so poor. There was no actual critical thinking actually required of the puzzles. The majority of the puzzles in the room required precise timing and were unforgiving; which was an incredibly frustrating given the barriers created to prevent communication. Attempting to tell a player in a different room to stop holding a lever within fractions of a second, via a grainy microphone, is bad.

Furthermore, this room is incredibly linear, there are no opportunities for the groups to operate in parallel. Each puzzle is a prerequisite for solving the next. For the vast majority of the experience, one person was watching the screen and holding down the microphone button, one other person was interacting with the puzzle, and our other teammates were standing around doing nothing. This is intentionally reflected in the room's own design, we were given a sheet which listed the order were were supposed to do the puzzles.

This escape room is not friendly to those with color blindness or to those with hearing disabilities. Be aware that some puzzles require prior knowledge of certain games and media.

The staff is courteous and friendly, and I can't fault them for the rooms that they're managing. The room is itself well decorated, maintaining its theme decently well. But otherwise, Quest Factor has failed spectacularly to make an engaging or interesting experience.

I can only recommend to the owners of Quest Factor that they return this room to beta testing and seriously rework how this room is designed. I can only expect their other rooms reflect these same bad design choices that we experienced in this one. I won't be returning to Quest Factor given the experience we shared, and I encourage others to...

I have played nearly 90 rooms and The Wizarding School, without a doubt, is at the bottom 3 games I have played. I brought 2 very experienced friends and 2 new friends and it pains me that everyone, including myself, wanted to leave the room after the first 15 minutes. This experience was definitely the most boring Escape Room I have ever played, though the quality of immersion saved it from being the absolute worst game I have played. The pros and the cons:

Pros: the Private booking was a great factor, decor was nice, the employees were super friendly (especially our hostess), and they added a really unique puzzle involving a sense that is typically not in escape rooms (regardless of it being a partially abstract puzzle, it was quite unique in a positive way). Cons: pretty much the whole experience. There is little backstory, no rules, and little guidance. We are very experienced, for the most part, and quite a lot of the content felt like large leaps in logic. Felt like they didnt really test the game that well. The game just isnt really that fun. Half the puzzles needed assistance to grasp what the creator wanted people to get from their design, and the other half were straightforward, but it took forever to complete. Too many puzzles had moments where you knew what to do you just had too many steps to get it done precisely. This was our BIGGEST issue: There were two points in the game where we were able to solve something correctly, continue in the game, but then solve other puzzles and find out that the result of solving those puzzles gave us more information for puzzles we ALREADY solved. It basically renders these latter puzzles useless and the result is for something already complete. That is sloppy puzzle design.

Overall, I cannot say anything for their other room(s), but definitely recommend staying away from The Wizarding School. Their other themes seem interesting, but definitely hesitant to pay to...

My group of five friends attempted the Game of Kings Escape Room, and it was a first for all but one. Most of us did not know what to expect, but we were very excited to begin. Once we started, we were pleasantly surprised and stumped by some of the puzzles, and we genuinely enjoyed our time during the course of the room. The quality of some of the pieces were very worn; however, we paid no mind since I am sure many people come and go through these rooms. Wear and tear is inevitable. We got to the second room, and there was a large pillar that needed to be aligned correctly. It was the first puzzle we solved in the room, but nothing happened. We quickly moved on to other puzzles since we wanted to complete on time. We solved every puzzle we could, but sadly, we ran out of time since we were stumped. The front desk agent, named "C," came in to get us, and we asked him what the solution was. He informed us that the pillar was supposed to open which allowed us to finish the last puzzle we were missing. We were extremely bummed out because we could have finished on time had there been no technical difficulties. We all left very disappointed and sad as a whole group, and "C's" response to the technical difficulty left a sour taste in our mouth as well. "C" did not offer an apology or encouragement. He simply said, "Well, I wish you would've told me." I don't believe he said this maliciously, but due to this being a first escape room for many of us, we didn't know to expect technical difficulties and to call him. We all just assumed that perhaps we needed to solve another puzzle for the mechanics to work. We were not offered any discount or an apology. I honestly wouldn't recommend this Escape Room to others. If you do go, expect that there may be technical difficulties and call the staff if something doesn't seem right or...