Review: Locked Escape Game Murfreesboro

RATING: 3 Keys RESULT: Win REMAINING: 8:10

Grab your popcorn and milk duds, because it’s time for your feature presentation!

Story

You have always dreamt of owning your own theater; however, something has always brought that dream to reality: L&P Theater and their famous popcorn. They have a secret recipe, and you know an angry custodian who is willing to leave his job with a bang. You’ve convinced him to leave the back door propped open for you. Follow the custodian’s clues, find the secret recipe, and escape before security makes their sweep.

They say one of life’s greatest lessons is that if you really want something, you must work hard to earn it. Forget that! Let’s just steal the famous popcorn recipe from a movie theatre that makes money hand over fist. In order to realize our dream of opening our very own theatre, we must borrow from (a.k.a. step on the back of) those that have paved the way before us. Luckily, we have befriended a disgruntled employee who is ready to stick it to their employer by providing us with an easy entry point.

Movie Theatre does a wonderful job overall of consistently applying the story throughout the entire experience. While the theme is not present a few times during the gameplay, frequent moviegoers should experience a feeling of nostalgia that truly feels like visiting an old cinema from their childhood.

Scenic

It’s a good thing the L&P Theater has their famous popcorn, because we’re not so sure the scenery is why the customers keep coming back. Think before there was Dolby Cinema, before IMAX, before surround sound, before … well, anything you’d find in modern theaters.

The scenery is definitely reminiscent of its namesake but more like an old dollar theater than the fancy new cineplexes popping up all over. The environment does look and feel like an older cinema – on a smaller scale, of course, perhaps mixed with a little bit of home theater room.

Once inside, you can’t help but immediately see the stadium seating, complete with cup holders and trash left behind by previous moviegoers. But, the focal point of the room is a large projection screen flanked by velvety, red curtains. Onscreen, a clip of an old-fashioned movie leader counts down. Rounding out the theme is patterned carpet typical of cinema décor.

Immediately off the mini-playhouse, a mechanical closet houses just the right assets to help us uncover the most memorable part of the game and our favorite part: a wonderfully surprising secret passage so satisfying that we wanted to reset it and do it again. This passageway leads into the next area of the cinematic journey.

Although fairly underwhelming scenic-wise, the components of this room were surely designed to gratify the fantasy of every big kid with a sweet tooth: being turned loose behind the concession stand. A glass case full of goody boxes typical of the offerings you’d pay dearly for at any cinema – Goobers and Skittles and SweeTarts, oh my! And, what movie buffet would be complete without a popcorn machine?

Puzzles

Like that wad of bubble gum you find under your armrest at the movies, the challenges stick fairly well to the theme and story throughout the experience. Luckily, those folks that left their trash in the seats mixed in some clues to advance the rest of us further in the game.

Within the storefront area, we encountered some puzzles that challenged our observation skills, while other tasks involved good motor skills. We had to pay close attention to the candies and ticket prices in order for the cash register to give up its treasures. Integrating the functionality of the bar code scanner and cash register was pretty cool and worked like a charm while adding a fun element of gameplay to the entire experience without having to do the math ourselves.

While we’ve retrieved many a key out of many a sink, Locked Escape Game Murfreesboro managed to come up with a clever solution for executing this task – and that is worthy of applause.

Naturally our heist built towards interacting with the popcorn machine itself before earning our final curtain call.

Overall

Overall, this room was certainly entertaining. The scenic elements in the second room could be greatly enhanced to play up the immersion of being in a theater lobby, where the anticipation buying $20 in over-priced goodies really builds for movie patrons.

We would also like to see the gameplay stay a little more in line with the story on absolutely every challenge, even if certain elements have to be re-themed so they are not a puzzle for puzzles’ sake only. These small improvements could really add up to a “thumbs up” from Siskel and Ebert, were they still with us (and had they known what an escape game was.)