Room Escape Adventures (Madrid)

  • Time: 60 minutes
  • Capacity: 4-12 players
  • Theme: Suspense
  • Difficulty: Medium/Hard
  • Recommendation: Skippable

Check position in our ranking and our detailed rating.

Date we played: January 2020 (9 players)

Almost a scam

Based on the North American model, players are locked in a room with a chained zombie inside. Every 5 minutes the chain gets loose a bit, so the zombie gains action range. After 60 minutes, the chain is long enough for the zombie to freely move around the whole room. If the zombie touches you, you are infected and have to remain in a specific spot of the room during the rest of the game, where you cannot move from, but you are allowed to look and talk to your team mates.

It looks good, so far. The zombie adds up tension and actually the effect is very positive. But that’s all the game has to offer. Said this, let’s go point by point.

To begin with, precisely in this case, it won’t be that difficult to create a minimum plot to immerse the players in a story in which they end up being trapped with a zombie. The decoration (poorly) simulates a lab but, neither in the website nor during the game master intro, anything is mentioned about it.

Despite the game master wears a blood-stained lab coat (over his visible street clothes), there is no acting at all. He explains the game rules (see the first paragraph of this post) and the goal: getting the door key from a box closed with a directional padlock. At least in our case, he didn’t explain how to reset a directional padlock; luckily one of us knew how to do it, otherwise it would have been one more frustrating thing about this game.

The hint system consists in making a gesture to the cameras. Then, the game master comes into the room and, with his normal voice tone and attitude (not playing any character), gives you a hint or directly tells you how to solve the puzzle, spoiling any kind of immersion that the zombie (the rest of elements definitely not) could have achieved.

The game has no original puzzles and, as for the riddles, they are not difficult but mostly rather not logical. You’ll have to insert codes in reverse order in some padlocks, without any clue indicating it. Even more, there are riddles with several possible solutions with no clues leading you to the correct one, hence you’ll have to randomly try. It is worth talking about a detail that left us open-mouthed. The solution of every puzzle or group of puzzles in the game provides directions (up, down, right, left) that form the combination of the directional padlock of the box with the exit key (this is not a spoiler, it’s told by the game master right at the entrance of the reception). Well, one of the group of puzzles doesn’t lead to any direction, actually to anything. Simply, when you solve it, the game master comes into the room and tells you (with his normal voice tone) the direction you need. Just like that. Regarding this specific group of puzzles, it also grabbed our attention a plasticized instructions sheet divided in two parts, with the second one of no use. When we asked the game master at the end of the game, he naturally told us: “Oh no, it is of no use, we removed that part of the game”. But yet, there it was! We all understand that, when a room is modified, old parts are sometimes difficult to remove, at least for a period. And when it happens, it is somehow highlighted at the beginning or during the game, verbally or with elements clearly indicating that those parts are useless. It is hard to understand how, in this case, no one has been able to print a new sheet, cross out the text or just cut the outdated half of the sheet…

We’ll talk now about a personal experience, which doesn’t have to be the same for other groups but shows the incompetence in the clients management and its potential consequences. We booked our game at 20:00. Less than 15 minutes before, they phoned us saying that we will start our game at 20:30 (and eventually it was at 20:50). The explanation was that the first group in the afternoon came late, delaying the rest of the groups. In every other escape room in the country, and in the world, terms are the following: if a group is late, after a reasonable margin of time (usually 5-10 minutes), either time starts to run or the game is cancelled, precisely not to delay the following groups. We all understand (and thank for) that some game masters, empathizing with clients arriving late, delay the game when there is no group after or check with the following group about that possibility. In our case, we were notified less than 15 minutes in advance, we were not asked about delaying the game but just told the game will start later, and we weren’t even offered the cancellation of the game. We don’t know what would have happened if we had demanded the cancellation and refund of the session (probably we wouldn’t have any problem), but our plan was already ruined. We were bringing a friend as a surprise for a celebration and, because of the delay, we had to choose between the escape room or the restaurant we had booked (in case of playing we would have missed the reservation). We chose the escape room and, our mistake, we chose wrong.

We don’t know if it was because of the delay or it is always like this, but the game master was very reticent to answer our questions about the puzzles at the end of the game (without being rude), we had to insist a lot. He didn’t even ask to take a picture after we played.

Now it’s time to talk about the aspect of this kind of rooms that annoys a player the most. The game is sold for 4-12 players. And, as you may guess, it is not intended for so many players at all. Maybe in a group of 4-6 players everyone could participate, but in larger groups there will be players unable to do anything, simply as a matter of space and type of puzzles. Not to mention the chaos during the game development when there are more players than the number it’s designed for. Even more, the price is higher than for any top game actually designed for large groups, with detailed decorations, good plots, and better puzzles where everybody participates. A standard player will feel to be almost scammed.

As an escape room, there is no reason to play it. As an activity for large groups, it’s better to go to any hall escape, designed such that every player can be active, and get a much better quality experience. As passionate escape room players, we don’t recommend this escape room at all.