Escapology Escape Rooms Clackamas — Local services in Milwaukie

After 30+ escape rooms, Escapology ranks amongst our favorites! When you've done so many, it's hard to find places that keep things fresh and exciting, but Escapology did just that! From the moment we walked into the immensely-themed lobby, I knew we were in for a treat. I've come to learn what about I want out of an escape room: I want a fun time, puzzles that are unique and challenging but not frustrating, and, most importantly, immersion. I want to feel like I'm in the 'Disneyland' of escape rooms (a high bar that 'Mayan Doomsday' at Think Tank, Spokane, set for me a couple years ago). Sight, smell, music, lights, decoration, authenticity. So many rooms immerse you in theming, but adding sound and smell could have taken it up a notch. Similarly, many rooms do well in theming, but involve convoluted and/or out-of-place combination locks, or cheap, plastic props that you can buy at a Halloween store that don't match the effort extended to the rest of the room. I can't stress the importance of little details. I think of 'Search & Rescue' at Escape, Spokane, a basic, camping-in-the-woods-themed Gen-1 room in which you need to accomplish your tasks before it gets dark. What you don't realize (or expect) until the third act of the game is that this whole time, the room has very slowly and subtly been getting darker. My eyes were not playing tricks on me. We did two rooms at Escapology, and they more than delivered. Scooby Doo was definitely our favorite. It's not often you can do an escape based on a TV show, so that was a pro. This was definitely a next-Gen-level room, which relies more on tech than traditional locks. It was great to be concurrently trying to escape and solve a murder mystery. I don't want to spoil what any puzzles are, but you're definitely in for a treat. 7 Deadly Sins was more of a challenge, but we did manage to escape in the nick of time. This was one of those rooms where you may need information from several clues (from different points of the game) to complete the puzzle. It kept us on our toes and thinking. Staff at Escapology were great. Very friendly and helpful. If I could improve one thing, it would be the hints. On a couple occasions, I would ask for a hint because we were stuck on the execution of a puzzle, not the concept of how to solve it. However, when I asked for a hint, I was told how to solve it, even though I already figured that part out. This wasn't a big deal though, and thankfully further clarification didn't penalize our number of hints. It would also be nice, though not necessary, to have TV screens in more than one room to minimize running back to the start to see hints. Overall, can't wait to visit again to try out the other rooms. Thanks for the fun...

PART 2 DISCLAMER: I HAVE NO ILL INTENTIONS OF THIS REVIEW. BUT I WANT TO BE PERFETLY HONEST WITH MY EXPERIENCE. I WILL NEED TO DO THIS IN PARTS. I HAVE A LOT TO SAY. 7 DEADLY SINS: Similar experience, except it wasn't as warm in the room. That was helpful. (I didn't choose the room. I'm not a fan of this type of theme. But for this I will just not add that perspective.) Creepy, but not scary which is great for all ages. There were several smaller scale puzzles that were intuitive and made sense, but once you got into a different part of the room the puzzles got to be way too confusing and honestly didn't release their solution when it should have. Puzzles were very loosely related to the theme and so didn't make sense since there was average 3-4 steps to solving or even coming close to solving each larger scale puzzles. The more frustrating thing was that if felt as though we had to ask for a clue just to solve anything past a certain point. That seems so ridiculous to me. It took a toll on my team and honestly made us just want to be done with it. The end of the room was very anticlimactic and was still confusing. Thankfully my niece still had a good time and my coworkers and I did try our very best to make the most out of it, but all the pitfalls were just too overwhelming to ignore. I cannot recommend any new time players to go to a franchise like this. The stories at Escapology have little to do with their puzzles. That goes for all of the rooms (3) I've played. The convoluted ways of solving them make it impossible to understand what's needed for the puzzles themselves and it completely steals all joy from the players to have a sense of urgency or remote productivity going forward in the room. Family owned is the way to go. I understand you might only have local franchised escape rooms, but you never know, that next trip you take to see your Aunt Peggy she likely has a local escape room that can offer you a wonderful time. Don't forget to check it out WEHREVER YOU GO! One last thing. I do not blame to staff of this location for this franchise. I blame the obvious management or corporate folks who seem to focus way more on the money making aspects of their rooms and less on the actual experience of the players, and setting their team up for success. 0/10 Do not recommend. Thanks for reading, hopefully this is...

My best friend and I visited Escapology on our girl’s trip and ended up playing four of their rooms across a couple days. We have a lot of experience with escape rooms and found these to be a few of our favorites!

Our top room here was definitely the Scooby Doo experience! The set was really really well done and even had voices from the real voice actors for the show! A ton of clever, complex, fun-to-solve puzzles that were a great challenge! Super immersive, dynamic gameplay, and a good variety of challenges throughout. We won with about 5min left to spare and used a couple hints. We had so much fun with the first one that when offered a discount to play again that night, we took it immediately.

We then played the Mansion Murder that we were told was pretty tough. These puzzles were a bit more intellectual in nature, and required some critical thinking, but we really loved the level of difficulty! Decent set with a couple good jump scares. We finished with about 12 minutes remaining on that one but used all of our free hints.

We booked a couple more rooms for another day— Lost City and 7 Deadly Sins. We loved the detailed, jungle-like set for Lost City and found ourselves saying, “that was a cool puzzle!” several times. While they were relatively simple, they were fun to solve and involved some moving parts. We didn’t use any hints and beat it with 22min to spare which speaks to its difficulty, but overall, we really enjoyed it.

And lastly, we played 7 Deadly Sins. We were under the impression that this was supposed to be a scary experience and were quite excited for it. The set was okay and there were a couple fun teamwork puzzles, but we were a little disappointed after playing the other ones. It wasn’t scary at all, and we were left wanting more, but we still had fun, beating the room with 19 minutes left to spare using no hints.

On our first night, Noah was the one who checked us in and out and hooked us up with the discount to play again. We latched onto her fun, encouraging personality and she made us feel at home! Thanks, Noah! You’re part of what made the experience so great!

TLDR: we would definitely recommend these rooms to anyone who enjoys escape rooms! Great sets, clever and unique puzzles, and good vibes when...