Kurt's Thoughts

Of the dozens of escape rooms that I & my family have been to, I judge them on a 5pt scale across 6 categories: DECOR, INNOVATION, NARRATIVE, ORIGINALITY, VALUE, SERVICE.

These are the Escape Room companies I’ve been to in Los Angeles (most several times) and assessed, ranked top to bottom:

Hatch Escapes (555555) – https://www.hatchescapes.com/
The best Escape Rooms we’ve ever been in. Ever. The most innovative, the most immersive & frankly, some of the most challenging. The creator puts such ridiculous care, detail, & original thought into their massive rooms like “Lab Rat”, that they only have 3 rooms. TOTAL. But they’re clearly a labor of love. You’ll find yourself saying, “What the… OMG” over and over again. If you go to one escape room in LA, let it be Hatch.

The Escape Game (555545) – https://theescapegame.com/la/
My favorite major Escape Room company… and also the most expensive. The lousy part is if you don’t buy out the room timeslot (8 people), The Escape Game may put strangers into the room with you to fill up the room which sucks. They have 8 rooms available & some rooms are only available at certain locations. They don’t skimp on tech innovation, decor/effects & the stories are generally solid. With the odd exception of “Prison Break” (which is apparently their 1st room ever & filled with older puzzle tropes & diminishing innovation as the story progresses), all the escape rooms are unique, innovative & really top notch quality, enough that we’ve played through several of them twice.

PanIQ Escape Room (444445) – https://paniqescaperoom.com/los-angeles/en
There’s some genuinely unique innovations in PanIQ’s rooms, eye-opening tech/innovation & their decor/presentation is always inspiring & professional, including their all-digital in-room displays. If they had a decent maintenance crew, they’d probably be closer to The Escape Game in quality & value but if there’s one thing that mars this company is the consistent *malfunctions* with its puzzle tech/components. Features frequently don’t work or require gamemaster intervention… I can’t count the number of times a PanIQ room had frustrating technical difficulties in San Jose, Los Angeles & Las Vegas.

MagIQ Escape Room (433344) – https://magiqescaperoom.com/los-angeles  
These rooms scream small business. The exterior looks like it was put together with bubble gum & scotch tape but the interior rooms are pretty solid. They were acquired by PanIQ Escape Rooms, so they’re now kind of the family-friendly subsidiary of PanIQ. The puzzles aren’t terribly complicated & one gets the impression that there’s only a couple people supporting the business, leveraging puzzles created & imported from Romania. That said, it’s likely the best facility for kids (parties) & families. Parents have closed circuit viewing of their kids in the escape rooms & the owners sell cocktails while you watch… so that’s kind of a hoot.

Trapped! (343442) – https://www.trappedescaperoomlosangeles.com/
This is way out in Upland, San Dimas or Las Vegas so I’ve only been able to do 3 rooms from Trapped! but from the rooms I’ve seen, their atmosphere is a little barebones with little decor but the puzzles are different & entertaining, with unique environmental ‘special effects’ & some genuine surprises. Both times however, it took an unusually long time to for the staff to get to us – leaving us waiting in the lobby for more than 30min despite having a scheduled appointment, so I’d be lying if I said that that didn’t rub me the wrong way.

60out (334344) – https://www.60out.com/
60out’s thing is they have a MASSIVE variety of rooms. These guys crank out escape rooms like Hollywood cranks out B-movies. They have something like ~25 escape rooms scattered throughout Southern California of variable quality. At some point, I felt like we’d visited all the bigger high-end rooms in Los Angeles so we started going through 60out’s rooms & yes, they don’t have the same level of detail, decor or plot but some of the “surprising innovation” in them – like in “Grandma’s Masterplan” – had our family surprised with some puzzles we’d genuinely never seen before, even in higher-tier escape rooms, so don’t sleep on them. Personally, I love these guys, especially their newer locations.

QuestRoom (324434) – https://questroom.com/
Questroom’s thing is they incorporate an actual live actor in all their rooms. It adds a level of ‘weird’ that is important because most of their puzzles aren’t very innovative so the actor’s performance is the highlight. Sometimes a puppet, other times a costumed individual – the live actor makes for an fun experience. And in one situation – an escape room called “Amnesia” – the story was genuinely shocking, and had a innovative twist we’d never seen before.

Architect Escape Rooms (323334) – https://architectescaperooms.com/
I’ve only been through 2 of their escape rooms so it’s harder to judge them but the decor is a little uninspired for the narrative they put forth. Also, in one room, the story flow required an actual sign in the room that explained to players “not to attempt to open this door until you do X Y & Z” which is IMO weak. Many puzzles are typical “find numbers” & “use them to open locks” & honestly not very surprising or innovative, relying on written puzzles using very little innovative technology, which has become the norm for most rooms. But the stories are unique & not the usual “heist” or “wizard” style narratives so if you’re looking for a good story you may enjoy Architect.

Maze Rooms (222222) – https://mazerooms.com/
These rooms were painful. We only did 2 rooms but both times, the decor was lackluster & atmosphere simply isn’t at the same level of investment as other escape rooms. Even the lobby appearance had us questioning whether or not we were in the right location. Most rooms rely on eye-rolling “find numbers” & “use them to open locks” puzzles. Very little was surprising & ultimately, I felt bad bringing my kid there because the solutions weren’t intuitive & often didn’t even make logical sense. Frustrated, we required confirmation of the solutions with the gamemaster to make sure we were on the right track.

(A great index of Escape Rooms in Los Angeles is available from World of Escapes at:
https://worldofescapes.com/quests/search?q=&l=Los+Angeles%2C+CA%2C+USA&p=)