Medieval Madness

Tech-heavy room that took me out of the medieval theme too often. Our team of two wasn’t large enough either in certain parts of the game. We beat it, but in truth, it was below other experiences we had at PanIQ and felt hard-on-purpose with subterfuge instead of design. Recommended teams of 3-4, you’ll beat the room, but you may not love the journey.

This room was very unique and the puzzles were all well integrated into the environment. There were not any padlocks or combinations, the puzzles were all very dynamic. There were a few points where it wasn’t clear what was needing to be done but overall it did flow well.

I have mixed thoughts on this room. Let me start with some positives: The atmosphere was immersive, and the tech mostly worked. There were some unique puzzles in this room that we hadn’t seen before. Here’s where it gets tricky: This room is apparently a “hard” room—it has an on-time escape rate of less than 10%. We were 2 enthusiasts + a newbie, and we escaped with 2:36 left on the clock. But what exactly made it hard? And what are fair or even good/fun ways vs. bad/tedious ways to make an escape room hard? This room prompted a long discussion afterwards of these questions and our personal preferences. At the end of the day, we enjoy hard puzzles that are complex to solve because they require multiple steps of critical thinking or effective teamwork—but we dislike puzzles involving a simple solution that we figure out quickly but there’s a lot of tedious trial-and-error or unnecessary repetitions in a sequence to actually complete the puzzle. Several of the “hard” puzzles in this room fall into the latter category, which is one part of why we didn’t love this room. We also don’t enjoy rooms that are dark, which then makes it really hard to see or read things, which also then contributes to puzzles taking longer to complete than necessary. Again, not a good way to make a room “hard.” But at least they gave each of us our own light source/torch. Another thing that made this room a bit “harder” had to do with the difficulties we had finding the confirmation trigger that occurs after we’ve entered the correct solution to a puzzle. The next reveal wasn’t always obvious, and that also led to some wasted time. WARNING: MILD SPOILERS AHEAD. We were also annoyed that we lost a lot of time at the beginning of the room because we did not use as much brute force as was apparently necessary to make a physical puzzle mechanism work. We figured out immediately what we needed to do, and we even tried to do it, but we couldn’t get the mechanism to work. 15 minutes later when we asked for a hint, the first words out of the game master’s mouth were—and I kid you not—“Now, as enthusiasts, you may not have realized that you needed to use more force…” And we’re not talking about just a little bit of force that was needed. We were seriously worried we’d break their game piece! One thing I did like about this room is that many puzzles were sensory-based, which makes sense in a torture chamber-themed room. But one particular sense was tested multiple times across multiple puzzles, which contributed to our feeling that several puzzles felt samey. Plus, there were distractions that strongly interfered with your ability to use this particular sense to solve the puzzles, which added to our feelings of frustration. In the end, we got out, but we didn’t leave feeling particularly happy about it. I guess I prefer “fun” escape rooms, and I definitely wouldn’t say this was a “fun” room. But then again, it was torture chamber-themed, so maybe I should’ve picked a different room to do!

Very fun game. It is a high tech room and it’s a little on the harder side but its definitely very fun.

Super high tech room! Harder but definitely doable with 2! We escaped with minutes to spare!