October 01

Tags

Escape Ok – Temple

Posted by on October 1, 2018 in North | Leave a comment

Escape Ok is located in Richmond Hill just north of Major Mac on Yonge St, in an old plaza by an All-Star wings.  A relatively new entry to the escape scene, we asked around, but none of our friends had tried it.  This time we went with Team K-Pop and decided to do a back-to-back after our first game here.


Long Story Short:  You are explorers uncovering the secrets of this temple.

Creativity and Design: Did it sell the story / theme?
Summary: Come for the set..

+ A large room with a great set, many of the pieces were interactive
+ Whether you like it or not, the room uses real sand
+ Good use of environmental lighting and cues to give clues and enhance the experience
– the room is already showing signs of wear and tear, one key puzzle piece was hard to manage

Bells and Whistles: Was it more than lockboxes?
Summary: … see some tech …

+ Good uses of tech throughout the room.
+ 1 or 2 unique uses on common tech

Intuitive:  Did you have to be inside the designer’s mind to solve it?
Summary:  … and suffer from puzzle headaches

+ Responsive Hint system: Walkie-talkie hints
– an agility-based task wasn’t clear on what it was expecting, which could have been solved many ways
– More direction could have been provided with some of the puzzles
– Having a music background would be beneficial.
– a task-based puzzle was frustrating to navigate, after 15 min we still couldn’t finish it

Staff Support/Price : Were they friendly/helpful? What was the Damage?

The staff was a bit of a mixed bag.  One staff member provided good customer service, while the other was the opposite.  When we finished our first game, we came back and asked if the back-to-back pricing applied to us.  The nice staff member was willing to do it, but the other one was very hesitant.  When we were trying to give feedback the “other” staff wasn’t receptive but very defensive on the few comments we had.  When questioning the task-based puzzle in particular, he was very adamant that a handful of groups had finished it quickly.  In the end we didn’t bother with any other feedback.

The current price is can be found on their website.

Overall: The set design and tech combination was very good for a first go at a room.  However there is still some gameplay polish they’ll need to cover to be considered a good room (whether or not they do it is another question).  Did we Escape ok?  No we didn’t. Was the Escape ok?  I’ll leave that up to you.

For more information check out:
www.escapeok.com