RATING: 3 Keys          RESULT: Win          REMAINING: 3:17

A crypt so cursed that it closed forever.

Through the darkened chamber doors with the smell of dust and stone and blood thick upon the cold air, the candle shivers, casting shadows upon the entrance to the tomb. There within its cold walls, a mystery awaits in the darkness. Its heartbeat slow and deep, waiting for you to creep ever closer. Symbols cover the walls. Skulls litter the floor, and the graves of the dead fill the room with fiendish suprises. Here in this crypt, your team must uncover the riddle before the devil knows you’re there.

Although every lick of sense our mommas gave us is telling us not to enter the dark, mysterious crypt, we simply cannot resist the unknown surprises and certain danger that the shadows ahead promise. Our mission is to sneak in and out of the crypt to retrieve the secret it holds before the devil retrieves us.

Our adventure begins inside a small, basic office. A number of macabre knick knacks fill the shelves, while reading materials supporting an interest in the afterlife and good vs. evil are present as well.

Upon advancing further in the game, we enter the main attraction of this experience: the crypt. Upon accessing the tomb, we find ourselves atop a platform roughly five feet above the ground level. Steps are illuminated by a number of candles and lead us downward to assess the lower part of the chamber.

Positioned at the pinnacle of this haunting scene is a dilapidated, wooden coffin chained shut with an old-fashioned padlock, because escape room. There are, of course, gothic motifs and gargoyle statues throughout the space.

Since our objective was to gain entry into the hidden tomb and escape as soon as possible, we had to discover the secret passageway from the study. Clever deciphering skills got us going in our quest, and we had to intentionally make a bloody mess in order to persuade a skull to divulge its secrets.

While we accurately pegged where the secret passage was located, we were not expecting what was revealed once it opened. We needed to find a means to climb into the burial chamber, and only then were we free to explore its contents. And our climbing ventures did not end there; we needed to relocate and reuse this same means of climbing later in the game. We found faux human remains deep within a pit and had to descend into the darkness armed only with a candle to manually explore beneath the soil and discover its secrets.

Before we were free of the crypt, though, we got an up-close and personal view of the lower catacombs. We had to push through – or rather, crawl through – our fear, armed with the secrets we learned before we could claim success and arrive safely back in the outside world again.

We’d like to note that this venue is pretty interesting. The location itself used to be a dance studio, and now that it is home to Escape Room RVA, it is known for turning rooms over quickly, sometimes at the expense of their finish quality.

You have to stay on your toes and be ever vigil with the offerings at this location because history has proven no game will be here for long.

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Venue:   Escape Room RVA

 Location:  Richmond, VA

Number of Games:  4

GAME SPECIFIC INFORMATION:

Duration: 60 minutes

Capacity:  8 people

Group Type: Public / You may be paired with strangers.

Cost:   This room has since been retired.