Escape Room BCS — Local services in College Station

Prior to this experience, I have done a great many escape rooms, only one other of which was here at Escape Room BCS, and it was the Attic Society one. That one was good. Sherlock was a whole other level of professional, with supremely high quality puzzles, theme, and entertainment value. The whole room was so cohesive as not only an escape room experience, but as a Sherlock Holmes adventure. To add to it, our escape room host, Claire, was superb. She properly prepared us for the experience, and when we asked for hints, she, unlike most other hosts I've experienced, didn't just give us the answer to what we were stuck on. She provided hints that helped us look at the puzzle in a new way, and so we were able to, in true Sherlock fashion, deduce the solutions for ourselves.

As I said before, I've done many escape rooms, some better than others. Perhaps it's the very nature of the theming of this one that lends itself to being perfect for this particular format of entertainment in the first place, but Sherlock was more than just well themed. The puzzles themselves utilized truly unique mechanics I haven't seen in other escape rooms before. The nature and variety of the puzzles were well balanced, lending each type of puzzle to best be solved by different people in our group based on our strengths. That very diversity is something that many others lack, and it's difficult to accomplish, let alone excell at. The combination puzzles on the railway screen were also well thought and executed. Everything was clearly laid out and organized in such a way that most of the solution methods were easy to determine how to use them, but challenging enough to actually solve them. Simple things like how certain bottles are arranged in a glass cabinet, and the rest of the content of those glass cabinets were just filler and decorations. It's the subtle room design elements like that that really make things shine for me. There were simple things that made me feel like I contributed to the room, instead of just being alone for the ride while everyone else solves the room. Many other rooms do this. But this one gave each one of us in our group that feeling that we ALL contributed and solved it all together, purposefully handing over other puzzles to those better suited to those types of puzzles. And I think that speaks more to the design of the room than to us as a group, because we've done so many of these, and this feeling is RARE.

So, TLDR; Sherlock is, after a group consideration and consensus, the best escape room we've ever done. And it's particularly special to us, as both Sherlock Holmes fans, and as a family who actually has the last name Holmes. We WILL be returning to this establishment.

Edit: I've removed the spoilers I had previously...

Our family did The Asylum escape, and although we overall had a good time, there were a few things I wanted to note for those considering doing this room.

For one thing, I would definitely not recommend doing this room if you are a first-time escapee (it does note on the website that it is best for experienced players, but I think this is rather an understatement!). We have done lots of escape rooms in the past, and something I noticed about this room versus others that I’ve done is that not all of the puzzles are intuitive. Some of them can only be solved using a clue OR by getting lucky and happening to interact with the room in the correct way, and some of the solutions seemed to not directly connect to the thing they were representing. While some of the puzzles were great, creative, and well thought out, others were confusing and not something you would consider until you’ve tried every other possible solution.

On that note, there are also way more puzzles than we anticipated. We did not escape, although we made it into the third section (of four, it seemed like? Although we didn’t get the walkthrough, so I’m not sure). Our gamemaster said that the majority of people do not make it as far as we did, or get stuck in the first section, which took well over half our time on its own. I was shocked to hear that we still had so much to go after having completed around 20 or so puzzles already.

The escape room itself looked phenomenal, and I was very impressed by the scenery, special effects, and the concept as a whole. The sound effect for getting a puzzle wrong, however, is an extremely loud buzzer that becomes incredibly overstimulating very quickly—to the point that I was begging people not to enter their guesses until they were sure because the sound was that grating, and it kept us on edge and anxious for most of the time (and left us with headaches afterwards!). I also wish there had been subtitles on their video features, because in comparison those were pretty quiet and at times hard to understand, and quite long for how little time we had.

In short, there were lots of things I liked about this room, but other things that we were simply not prepared for. Considering we received a great many clues (far more than the 5 allotted) and solved tons of puzzles and still didn’t make it through to the final section, I would only recommend this room if you’re looking for an extreme challenge, and understand that even then, you likely will not escape. Next time we’ll be opting for...

April 2024: Back in the area and took the owner's recommendation of Sherlock and Secret Attic Society. They were both great experiences, and we are glad we came back. The Sherlock room was extremely immersive with the Stephen Fry voiceovers (seriously incredible inclusion!), props and decor, limited padlocks, and allusions to the Sherlock stories; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself would've been proud. The puzzles were a mix of simple and complex and included math and word games with a few manipulatives. Definitely requires quick reading and quick thinking, and not an easy one for younger children to contribute as much.

On the other hand, the Attic was a simple, low-key room setup with a loose plot and a whole lot of padlocks, but the game design and large number of puzzles made for a very enjoyable experience. Our group of five had the most fun in the Attic, having to rely on teamwork while being separated most of the time with puzzles using elements combined from each player's area. I just wish there was at least a hole or some way to hear each other better than yelling through the wall.

August 2023 (4 Stars): We completed two rooms (Classified and Breakout) and had fun at each, but we've come to expect more after seven years of escaping. There were a lot of padlocks to open, so we stayed busy, but there were so many locks without any connection to the puzzles. In some cases, there weren't even puzzles but just finding 3- or 4-digit numbers written in different places and then trying them in every padlock until one opened. They use a phone system to provide clues and write your goal time on a whiteboard. The room design relies mostly on the props for any immersion. Overall, the rooms reminded us of our earliest experiences, but this will still make for a good date night or get-together. And it is definitely good for families where debates may occur over who gets to open a lock, since there are so many to...