It’s been nearly two years since I was introduced to escape room games by Cheech, the Bacon Columbus who then introduced me to Joshua, the Scooby D. Holmes and Jing, the Rosie Ring. They were completely taken in by REG they played in Singapore.
As for me, I’ve always liked the PC escape games. The chance of survival that depends on wits and wisdom makes me feel a little like MacGyver and a little bit like Nancy Drew. That and also any PC games was an awesome excuse for procrastinations.
So when Cheech told me about those games being brought into reality from the virtual world, I am sold. I get to be MacGyver and Nancy Drew for real! Throw in some guns and tomb raiding and I can be Lara Croft and Indiana Jones. How cool is that?
Escape Room was only about a few months into operation then. Everything was still new and the first room that we played was Prison Break. What else could be a more appropriate theme for escape games? We’d get to know what it’s like be Michael J. Scofield from the American TV series. Well, maybe just a little.
By now in the year 2014, I’m pretty sure many has played the room so I suppose it’s ok give out little more into the details.
Before we go into the room, we were handcuffed & blindfolded. It was AWESOMELY PAWSOME for the first experience. Making things a little more real. Once in the room, we found ourselves behind a prison bar. Cool set up and props. It does looked and felt like a prison that I’d have imagined; not that I’ve been in a real prison before but this was convincing enough.
It was obvious that the first thing to do was to get un-cuffed and to somehow unlocked the prison bar. There was a key out of our reach, some hooks and we found some ‘tools’. This is when we discovered that I’m actually pretty skilled with tools. Hence, I’m the MacGyver’s apprentice.
Outside of the bars, we need to solve some riddles of who’s guilty to open the locks. So there’s a lot of reading to do, putting two and two together and a little math that test our detective skills. If we weren’t’ pressed for time, it would have been fun to slowly read through and digest the crime record of the prisoners. We were also introduced to some interesting locks i.e magnetic locks.
We barely made the break but we did with some brute force. Although we managed to escape, brute forcing took away some of the ‘fun’ and the ‘win’ somehow felt a little short. That’s when we learnt that it is not success that we looked for but it is the experience that the game has to offer. Success is sweeter when we are fully indulge in the experience.
Prison Break by Escape room has everything that I imagined how an escape room game would be. There’s a good balance of “jury rigging” and deductive reasoning that comes into play.
It was the best because there was no other to compare to then.
Now, nearly two years and more than 20 rooms later, I can’t be sure to say the same as escape room games have evolved. Room and themes gets better and better. Story immersion has become more important than ever. It’s every minute of the 45-minutes experience while you are in there rather than just managing to escape from the room.
Never the less, it was one of the best and it will always have a special place in my heart.
Theme: 5/5
Puzzle difficulty: 3/5
Props/set: 4/5
Production quality: 4/5
Search amount: 4/5
Physical activity: 2/5
This room is featured in our 2014 Best Escape Rooms for First Timers.
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Image taken from Escape Room eCurve website.
Prison Break
Pros
- Interesting narratives
- Deductive reasoning in puzzles
- Physical tasks
- Interesting locks
Cons
- None