ESCAPE ROOM REVIEW – THE QUICK AND DIRTY
Play if… you enjoy solving murders, want to be a Bobby, and like climbing through windows..
Avoid if… you dislike telephone booths, bars, or alleyways.
THE BASICS
Time Emporium Escape Rooms:
Address: 391 Denver Ave, Loveland, CO 80537 (click address for Google Map)
Contact and Website: 970-619-8639
https://time-emporium.com
The Room – Wizard’s Tower:
Description (from the company website): There’s been a series of murders in the dark alleyways of London. We think it has to do with another time medallion that we’ve located. The murderer might even be in possession of this medallion. A Scotland Yard detective was murdered on the corner of Commercial and Hanbury streets. Start by searching there for any evidence the police may have missed.
Difficulty (1-10): Medium
Time Limit: 60 minutes
Cost: $28
Identifier: R1
Party Size: 8 Max
Staging Area: Small waiting area with merch and a couch.
Metro Access/Parking: There’s a parking lot for the facility and the adjacent store. Unsure about metro access.
OUR EXPERIENCE
This is the video we took before we entered the room:
This is the video we took just after we completed the room:
As I’ve said a few times in recent memory, I’m apparently forgetting to do the post room video.
Note: The ERG were given the opportunity to try out this room for free, with the understanding that we would continue to provide an honest review and follow the same process we’ve used on all of our other ratings.
Logistics:
Description of the room: You start off in an alley along side a bar, brick walls, windows, and all.
Understanding of the Mission: Retrieve the Time Medallion by solving this murder mystery before you become the next victim.
Did We Escape: Yes
Time Remaining: A few minutes, IIRC.
Our Suggested Party Size: 6ish would work.
Did the room challenge the entire team? Yes
Members of our team (other than the ERG): Steph D
Worth the time and money? Yes
Where to Eat/Drink Before/After:
- Grimm Brothers Brewing Company is across the lot but they were closed by the time we finished.
| JASON says: |
|---|
| Overall Expectation (Summary) |
| Having just (barely) escaped the Wizard’s Tower then interviewing our hosts, we embarked on a murder mystery, trying to solve the murder of a Scotland Yard detective. Based on our experience just a half hour or so earlier, we expected this room to be similarly well built and puzzled, and we weren’t disappointed (thankfully). |
| Story (Rating) |
| Before being transported to 1889 Victorian London, you’re told there have been 3 murders believed to be serial in nature. You then find out that victim 4 was one of Scotland Yards best detectives, who had been assigned to the case.
You go back in time to deal with this serial killer and recover his/her time medallion in the process. You hope. Else you become victim 5 and don’t make it back at all. Rating: 7.5/10 |
| Mission (Rating) |
| Following 4 grisly murders, you’ve been tasked as the next detective on the case. Go to the corner of Commercial and Hanbury, investigate the scene of the crimes, piece everything together, and see if you can find something that previous detectives missed to catch this killer. Your life is in your own hands here, for if you don’t figure out who the killer is, you might just end up being victim number 5.
Rating: 8.5/10 |
| Puzzle Diversity (Rating) |
| We started off a little slow here, as has been happening lately, but once we began finding items, things started to click. This room does actually make you play as if you’re a detective. As you progress, you’re going to have to recollect things and backtrack to find the references (just like the Ripper room). There’s a small number of hidden items, a few pad locks, plenty of magnetic things (this is 1889 after all), and a little bit of…physicality, if you will. All in good fun, though.
No puzzle type was repeated (nothing even similar to what we encountered in Wizard’s Tower) and there is a good spread. From black-light to chess, magnets, and some association, there was a little for everyone in this room (even some novices). Rating: 9.5/10 |
| Puzzle Complexity (Rating) |
| Let’s start off with this: this room is listed as Medium to Wizard’s Tower’s Hard. I found this room harder, but your mileage will vary, of course.
There’s a lot to find in this room, but one little hint I’ll give is that items in this room are not Pokémon, if you catch my drift. We were stumped for a bit, but the overly helpful disembodied voice from Wizards Tower followed us to London to give further guidance. The puzzles were a good combination of common sense and critical thinking. The association puzzles were actually pretty tricky here, which is generally the opposite of how they are. Make sure you’re extra observant in this room, too. There was a point where I knew I had seen something but couldn’t remember where and I’m sure Sam was like, come on, you know you’ve seen it… We even got stumped on the end game puzzle, to retrieve the Time Medallion. We shouldn’t have, but we did. BTW, the spread here, not counting the seek-and-find moments, was roughly 4-8. Rating: 8/10 |
| Flow/Cohesiveness/Uniqueness (Rating) |
| Let’s talk about décor first. As you can see from our team photo, there’s a real phone booth in there. The ‘room’ is designed to be an alley and it’s very well done. You’ll feel like you’re running down an actual alley. (And yes, I do mean running because yeah, I ran back and forth multiple times.) Now, I don’t know what a London flat would have looked like back in the late 1800s, but it was very…British.
The puzzles keep you moving throughout the room, so make sure you’ve been following Rule #1 (no, not that rule 1, this one). And you best be limber (or have someone on your team that is). There was only one thing to me that seemed out of place when it was first encountered, but in the grand scheme of things, I understand why it was where it was. There were times that we were working together on puzzles and others where she (or I) were doing things on our own. I’m sure there’s a puzzle or 3 that I completely missed because Steph had finished it before I finished one that I was working on. Ah yes, teamwork! Rating: 8.5/10 |
| Fun/Amusement (Summary) |
| This room made us think in different ways from Wizards Tower, but we had a good time nonetheless. There’s also a nice little tchotchke for you at the end. |
| Game Master (Summary) |
| Sam was our GM again and he kept it real for us in this one, though we needed more help than last time. |
| How Helpful Were Any Clues Given, if any (Summary) |
| I definitely had more of those “dammit, we didn’t need a hint on that” moments in this room (not that we got that many hints…). |
| RAGE Meter Score |
| Label me annoyed here, mainly because I was expecting this to be easier than Wizards Tower. I guess that’s my own fault (well, they did tell us that AND it’s listed as easier than the Tower on their site). But still, it was fun and a really well done take on the Ripper.
Rating: 👊👊 |
ESCAPE ROOM GUYS’ OVERALL SCORING 8.4/10
Final Thought: Now that we’ve done 2 rooms at this location (we’ve yet to do Secrets of the Pharaohs, but from what I gathered from Sam, it’s going to be similar to this room), I can safely say these guys are the real deal. As I said in the review of their other room we’ve done, if you’re in Colorado, you owe it to yourself to check this out. Their next room should be ready in the coming months, so stay tuned and follow our site for a review of when we test it (I hope!).