We got to play Room 13 @ Escape Room for free thanks to Weiming winning the contest on their FB page. However, because their management didn’t communicate the contest with their outlet staff, so they didn’t even know the contest exist and had to spend some time to call their boss to verify us as the winner to redeem the free game.
On the first impression when we entered the room, it was quite impressive compared to our previous Escape Room experience. The quality of the props and production is obviously improved and there are some high tech mechanics that really surprised and wow us. It’s good that with so many new games coming up, escape room has evolved from purely analog mechanism into high tech mechanism.
Mechanism aside, there are still some apparent flaws in their puzzles design. As usual, puzzles are mostly not directly related to the theme, and many times we feels that there’s not enough information given to solve the puzzles. It leaves the players to guess the right solution from a million ways to interpret the puzzles. For example, a good puzzle feels like 1+2=?, but a puzzle without enough information feels like 1_2=?. And to make it worse, when we asked for help in one of the “1_2=?” puzzle, the staff told us that the answer is 6, and why is it so? Because they purposely turned the 5 upside down to trick players assume it as “1+2=?”, while it’s actually “1+5=?”. This is absolutely bullying and punishing players.
We didn’t manage to escape in time, and after the staff explained to us the answers to all the puzzles, it feels like coming out from an exam where most of the questions in the exam paper were never taught before in class. It’s not fun and not challenging because you have no chance to win.
My final verdict, this feels like watching a Michael Bay movie, there’s lots of excitement and cool effects but the story doesn’t make sense and is full of plot hole. You may go for the sake of trying out the cool mechanism but don’t expect to solve all the puzzles.
Props and set : 5/5
Difficulties : 5/5
Production Quality : 5/5
Search amount : 2/5
Puzzles crafting : 2/5
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Image was taken from Escape Room’s website, visit to find out more and play.