Dick Dickerson: Private Eye -retired

The room was an office, as expected by the backstory. Lots of locked cabinets and a few interesting tricks to certain things that can easily be overlooked. There were lots of puzzles that could be solved at the same time, making use of a larger group but a bit cramped for too many people plus a host in the room. Some of the puzzles were fairly straightforward and some were a little more difficult to make the connection. Not that it was far fetched, but just not something you’d think of right away. The objective is not to “escape” the room, but to submit proper evidence to the authorities, otherwise you’d be arrested instead. Again, as a room that is low/no tech, there are a lot of creative puzzles for the different locks found about the room. The immersion is always an issue when there’s the host in the room, where it can add or detract from the theme of the room depending on which staff member you get that day. Some items in the room were easily overlooked as they were not relevant to any of the current puzzles, but had to come back to at a later point but kind of forgot they existed at that point. The room had an extra 10 mins of time (70 min total) as opposed the other rooms due to the complexity and/or amount of puzzles involved in the room. This makes three for three at this location for not passing, but always getting to the final puzzle.

I did this room with my family instead of our normal group so this was a bit of a different experience for me. Playing with two people who had never done a room before I found this room fairly beginner friendly. There was a lot to do in this room so we were able to split up and complete different puzzles simultaneously which was nice. The feedback from my family was that they felt like they were able to all contribute and were quite happy with the experience. This was my second room with Escape Capers and I found the in-room host much more believable and helpful this time around. The goal of this room was also different in that it was an investigation rather than an escape. We did technically finish this room at the last second, but we chose the wrong suspect resulting in a failure. After having a not so great experience with Maxim’s Dinner Party, this was a great room that makes the “hosted” escape experience a good one.