Mayhem Ranch

The last room on the August Edmonton Escape Room tour is Mayhem Ranch at Breakout Edmonton. Fuck this room. I’m very disappointed with this room and to a greater extent, Breakout. This is their newest room at their first location and it’s a massive disappointment. First of all, we were stuck on the first puzzle for a least 15 minutes. There was absolutely zero direction and with a linear room, that just can’t happen. There was a bunch of items that were discovered, but none of them were related to solve the first puzzle. A hint was burned after a ton of frustration and time loss. Once we figured out the first puzzle (very stupid puzzle I might add), things started to flow but with such a short amount of time given, we were doomed for failure and that’s what happened. With that being said though, most of the puzzles were time wasters. I do not see how this room can be completed in 45 minutes. There’s also one very dangerous aspect of this room. Without giving it away, don’t crank it over 50, lol. As for the décor and immersion, I don’t know what the fuck this setup was supposed to represent. Skip this room. They have better. Much better.

This by far is one of my least favourite rooms I’ve ever played. I left this room feeling insanely frustrated and confused. To start, the decor is just plain bad. From worn out, torn up AstroTurf, to an untouched ceiling, this room had next to zero immersion factor. It is supposed to be set outside, with your team attempting to break into a farm house/barn to prove a string of murders that have happened. Obviously did not feel like that at all. As for the puzzles, these were some of the most confusing and nonsensical puzzles I have encountered. I don’t know if we just don’t have the same train of thought as the creators but we just didn’t get a lot of them. Some of the physical puzzles themselves didn’t work, or required much more force than normal to make them move, making you think that they were not supposed to move and throwing us off(the general rule is if anything requires excessive force to move, then it is not part of the game). There was also multiple puzzles that were huge time wasters requiring you to sit and read through long texts. Finally, there was a puzzle requiring you to turn a handle to put tension on a wire. When you are first led into the room you are specifically told not to wind it more than 50 times around for fear that it puts too much tension on the wire causing it to snap. I thought this was a dangerous element and while they do warn you about it, there is no guarantee that people won’t mess it up and having the potential for metal wires snapping and hurting someone is just not ok. This room as a whole was a huge disappointment and would recommend avoiding at all costs.