This is our third time at Time Escape. The staff is personable and friendly every time we come. Every time we ask for a hint, we don’t feel silly because they come into the room with all smiles. I also like how they cheer for you when you get out.

Time Escape is home to one of my favourite groups of staff members! They’re always so cheery and friendly.

Similar to Imperial Palace, Time Escape makes clever use of technology to provide big payoffs. Usually when you input a combination, you unlock and open a box. Here, when we solved a puzzle, something would pop open in the corner of the room which felt really satisfying.

I would say that the puzzles here required more visual skills rather than logical thinking. You still get to interact with the physical puzzles in the room, but you just have to see (instead of think) things in a certain way.

My only complaint is that the big task at the end led to a lot of time bottlenecking. Only one person can perform the task, so everyone else playing the game is left sitting back and watching with bated breath. The progression is linear in the room so they can’t do anything else because everything in the room would have been solved already.

In every Time Escape room that we’ve done so far, there’s always been a standout puzzle that made us go “whoa, what?!” in a really good way. This room was no exception – the “whoa” puzzle stood out as soon as you saw it. My only issue with this puzzle is that only one person at a time could do it, and it took a considerable amount of time (I think for us it was about 10 mins?). That said, it was still a lot of fun to do!

The rest of the puzzles were also quite solid. There was a nice gem of a puzzle at the very start, and there was also some smart use of blacklight.

Like Ben said, the first part of the room was striking, particularly because of the efficient use of narrow space and the intimidatingly handsome suit of armour. Every inch of the walls was also covered from top to bottom with wallpaper.

The only thing I didn’t like was the middle portion of the room which, while technologically savvy, didn’t necessarily complement the rest of the room.

The first part of this room was excellent and really looked like the outside of a castle, but once we got in, the castle-y vibe wasn’t as strong (except for the “whoa” puzzle – which stood enough to actually contribute to how the room looked overall!).

I said this in Imperial Palace, but I love the walls in Time Escape rooms. They make the entrances to the next room a bit more inconspicuous so that it’s not completely obvious where you’ll be going next.

One thing that Time Escape does consistently is make the room dark, but not too dark that you would require a flashlight. I think this is the perfect tick on the darkness scale because it’s dark that you feel immersed, but not too dark that it becomes annoying to solve puzzles while holding a flashlight the right way. They also do music really well because it’s consistently the same volume even after moving on to different stages of the room.

While I didn’t necessarily feel like I was in a castle (just because the room was small), I still felt tense throughout the room, especially during the very last task.

I think that this room only did an ok job of making you feel like you were in a castle. How it really pulled you in though were the puzzles, which were just difficult enough to keep us in game mode, but not so hard that we got frustrated.

The backstory to this room was short and not really substantial. The name itself refers to “secrets” but after finishing the room, we didn’t really come across any secrets.

In terms of look, this room succeeded, which is consistent with any other Time Escape rooms. It really looked like a castle. In terms of puzzles, however, some were thematically relevant while the centerpiece puzzle could have been from any other theme.

The gist of the story here is to break in and get treasure – nothing too unique. The puzzles and decor were occasionally not quite right for the castle theme so at times it felt like the room was just a collection of puzzles that didn’t have much thematic connection (but that doesn’t mean they weren’t fun!).

This room gets a solid #platinum for me. This is our third time at Time Escape and our experience has always been good. I would recommend this room for a smaller group so that everyone can have the full experience.

This room gets a #platinum! The individual scores might not reflect this overall score, but the pieces of this room really came together to make a fun and complete experience.