That room was pretty cool so I was excited to see one that was a little more on the high-tech side. Read on.

This was actually the second room that we did at One Way Out Escape Rooms (first one was The Lost Professor), and we ended up being invited back to do the room that was closing (The Shuttered Room).

We had a great experience in The Lost Professor, so we were pretty psyched to do another of their rooms… one that had the promise of a lot of hi-tech puzzles and locks.

They didn’t disappoint.

You have signed up to be a volunteer in one of Dr Joule’s experiments, however you quickly realize that you’re actually a test subject, not just a data point in his trials. (At least that’s what we were told.)

Which of those sounds better? One is the website, one is what we we’re told before entering. We’ve talked about what it is to be immersed in a story and having two distinct stories given really chafes my willy.

Furthermore, nothing even pushed the story along. What exactly did we think we were volunteering for? What was going to happen to us if we didn’t get out? What happened to us after we got out? (We went drinking, that’s what…)

Rating: 5/10

We’ve done a number of laboratory rooms, and this is quite a common theme with escape rooms. However, there is a nice spin on the standard “you’re locked in a lab and something happens and you have to find your way out.” The premise of being hired by the professor to look after the lab as the lure to get you in there was a nice twist.

You get a good level of detail before going into the room, and while the theme isn’t fully original, it has a fun story line that really puts you into the experience as soon as you enter this room that has tons of gadgets, gizmos and whoozy-whats-its.

Rating: 7.5/10

No specific task needed to be performed (unless you count what you had to do to open the door), other than the side task of feeding the dog.

There was so much that could have been done to spice this up (or spice up the story for that matter) but it seems like that was just happenstance and played second fiddle to just getting out. Don’t get me wrong, there was plenty to do for 3 people, but not sure what was actually necessary, nah mean?

Rating: 2.5/10

Again, it’s pretty clear as to what you have to do, and how to get there poses a bit of a challenge (and we only had 3 people to do the room), so this worked in our favor in getting pretty into the puzzles and locks as to how to figure out how to get out.

The spin gave this theme partial credit on the originality factor.

However, there is a mini-mission to feed the professor’s dog which was a fun little addition.

Rating: 6/10

Things we had to work with: graduated cylinders, photos, dip switches, keys, locks (most of the puzzles ended in opening a lock of some sort). Just to name a few. There was some black light work, too, but I don’t want to talk about it. It’s the one thing that really pissed me off (I *love* black light puzzles) and it just wasn’t done…right. (At least the way I would have done it.)

Plenty of work for 3 people, however, including branching paths, so each of us kind of worked on one path at a time.

Rating: 7/10

Lots of observational puzzles in this room, which is where one of our clues had to come in because the three of us kept missing it. This may be overall the part of the design of the room because YOU are also being observed. However, some of them were takes on what we’d seen used elsewhere, so we at least had an idea as to HOW to attempt to solve it.

I really did love the big tech machine in the middle of the room (not a spoiler because they have photos of this on the booking site), and you really have to explore every panel and flashing light to figure out where you are in the room and what can be triggered by something else you’ve done.

Rating: 8/10

There wasn’t much difference in difficulty, in my opinion. We were all go all the time in this room with only minor stutters.

One thing of note: You will need at least 4 hands to do this escape, so bring a friend.

Rating: 5.5/10

Some of the puzzles also test your ability to work together as a team… one person could certainly do it, but if you’re able to communicate well and take different parts of the puzzle, you’ll solve it much faster. There were points where two of the three of us were working on one puzzle, and the other was taking notes on the whiteboard, or exploring other parts of the room.

Rating: 8.5/10

Everything worked for being in a lab, but I still feel like the lack of actual story line lowered the overall quality of this room and what it could have been. I didn’t feel like I was doing anything particularly useful or life-saving; I was just solving puzzles to open a door.

And I’m not quite sure everything was as high-tech as Mike is making it out to be. The only real tech was that center console and only parts of it.

Rating: 8/10

I did like how the room flowed… it was not linear until about half-way through the room (all rooms have to become linear at some point), which allowed us to work independently and in small teams. At some point, even all three of us were working on puzzles, which helped keep us together as a team.

The tech was unique to the point where we hadn’t seen those exact puzzles before, and that was a pretty cool use of their design expertise to make the room more of a science experiment vs. a medical one.

And, everything in the room did fit in with the story or mission… I can’t recall one item that I thought was out of place.

Rating: 9/10

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