The House of Clues Escape room games — Local services in Santa Barbara

While visiting from out of town we wandered into this place and they had an opening so we decided to try it. We did the spooky grandma's house room (don't remember the exact name). It was my first escape room but my friend who has done many of them said this one was rather challenging but we had fun solving it. It helped that we had 4 people to cover more ground and to figure out the puzzles with. The hidden room somehow opened before it should have which through us off a bit and eventually they told us we needed to go back to the other room and finish some things before entering the hidden room. We felt they let us explore the hidden room to long which wasted our time since the hidden room wasn't supposed to have even opened yet. I also found the way to escape the hidden room (which was the goal of the whole thing) before we were supposed to on accident while trying to look for what to do next and I didn't realize what I had found till after. Ultimately we solved it (although somewhat out of order) because we did complete all the puzzles. The employee was confused about the glitches we experienced but overall we had...

A few years back a group of us spent a couple days in Santa Barbara and we popped into this Escape Room on State Street. We played Grandma’s Attic and really loved it. Fast forward a couple years and we were back in Santa Barbara and couldn't wait to go back and try another room. This time we did the ALCATRAZ Room, which we were told was more difficult than Grandma’s Attic and was exactly what we were looking for. HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT! For starters, no human introduces you to the story or the room. Instead, the bored person at the front desk plays a one minute video for you to watch where a completely unenthusiastic guy tells you the "
Rules” of what not to touch and the set up of the story which was, “you’re in prison and you need to escape.” Thanks. That boring beginning was a red flag as to the unimaginative, poorly maintained, and disappointing game to come. We escaped in less than 30 minutes. A new record. To add to the sad state of the place we could hear the other people in the other rooms while we were in our game. A complete waste of a couple hundred dollars. We...

My wife and I are escape room enthusiasts with over 20 rooms under our belts. We try to play at least one game whenever we travel. While we didn't escape from The House of Clues' Alien Spacecraft Invasion (correction: we escaped, but we didn't save the earth), we had a blast! The scenery in the room is awesome, the lights are disorienting (just like they should be on a UFO), and the puzzles are challenging! Plus, there's a surprise waiting in the room that made both me and my wife jump!

My only complaint about this room was the number of similar locks. It's totally a preference thing, but I think a perfect escape room has only one of each type of lock at a time, so when I discover 3 digits or a key, I know exactly where it's supposed to go. Here, I had to test each combination in three or four different locks before finding the right one. That ate a lot of our time.

We had a nice chat with the owner after playing and are very impressed with their business!

Overall, we had an excellent time here and will be returning to play their...