I’m going to echo what Ben said.

BEN

The staff was quite friendly throughout! There was one instance where we asked for a hint and the person who came in just did the puzzle for us, which is one of my pet peeves.

In terms of difficulty, the room had both easy and difficult puzzles, which became ideal because we found momentum.

I think what worked well in this room was its size. It was small enough that everyone could divide and conquer, but not too small that solving puzzles became a bottlenecking experience. The puzzles were deliberately placed around the room so that every space became occupied. The room gave all five of us enough to do so that all of us came out feeling accomplished.

Like Ben said, overall, the puzzles were cleanly executed. You get that consistent lowkey feeling of “Oh, that was cool” after solving each puzzle throughout the room.

I liked the progression of difficulty in the puzzles here. At the start it was a little bit easier to find and connect things together, but later on you needed to do more thinking about whether something is going to be relevant at the time you find it. Overall, the puzzles here just felt very smooth. There were no mechanical issues or anything that seemed like a stretch.

As soon as we walked in, there were no obvious locks that we needed to open. Like Ben said, this design was genius because it just added to the whole feeling of being in an actual cabin, so kudos to the art department. Each individual prop was purposefully integrated and created an overall authentic cabin look.

(This is probably my favorite-looking room at Escape City.)

Wow. This room was strikingly beautiful and was very believably a cabin. I loved the use of space in this room – it was somehow both tight and spacious at the same time, creating a feeling of an enclosed area while still letting our group roam around without feeling squished. There were also no lock boxes or pinpads that stood out, which (to me) is excellent integration of puzzles into the environment.

“Eerie” is a good word to describe this room. I caught myself being jittery because of how effective this room was in creating an intense atmosphere without relying on horror elements. Even when I was playing with four other friends, I felt alone.

I would also like to add that we’ve done a lot of escape rooms in the dark, but darkness isn’t always effective. Here, the darkness contributed to the feeling of isolation and the feeling of nighttime.

Even though we did this room in the middle of summer, I still felt like it was winter. The atmosphere here wasn’t scary, it was more eerie and kept you on edge as you went through the room. The music, the look, and the well-integrated puzzles all worked together to create a fantastically immersive experience.

My only complaint was the final puzzle. It felt very intuitive and easy to solve for my group, so we were able to solve it almost immediately. We questioned whether we had actually escaped because it just seemed so anticlimactic!

I disagree with Ben below about the way the back story was presented. I thought it was clever because it just added more to the feeling of eeriness–you watch a news story about an incident that mirrors your current situation.

Although the cabin theme has been overdone, they did a great job of incorporating cabin-y elements and puzzles.

Coming into this room, I thought it would be very similar to Nightfall, but I was happy to see that the two rooms were different takes on a similar theme! While this theme wasn’t especially unique, I really thought that Escape City did a good job of making everything in the room relevant to the “cabin” theme. The backstory that they play for you on the video at the start was a bit misleading – it was quite long and didn’t have very much to do with the actual room.

Because I had so much fun, I would give this room a #diamond! The puzzles were polished, the decor was authentic, and the isolation felt real. This is a solid room to do if you’re looking for something immersive without wanting to get scared.

I give this room a #platinum! This was a very strong and complete room that I found really well-balanced. There isn’t a particular kind of group I would recommend this room to – I think that anyone would really enjoy doing this one!