RATING: 1 Key          RESULT: Win          REMAINING: 12:00

Beware of Zombies – and an abundance of white walls.

You have found the hideaway house from the zombie apocalypse, when you realize it belongs to the doctor who had found the cure to the apocalypse. He had been living here for months since the beginning of the outbreak looking to find a cure. Once he discovered the cure and realized he was on limited supply of food resources, he relocated. He has left just enough of the cure for you and everyone in your group. Locate the vial of the cure and you will escape. You don’t have much time because the zombies are near, use your time wisely.

Survivors of the virus are stranded in a safe house that conveniently contains the very thing that could save them all. Hidden within locked rooms of the quarantined home, the antidote for the outbreak is stashed. The zombie horde is nearing, however, leaving the survivors with only an hour to find the cure and vaccinate themselves before the infestation overtakes them from within. Because escape game.

Apocalyptic escape games are fairly common in the industry, so it requires some creativity to separate an experience from all the others. In addition, escape enthusiasts encounter nonsensical scenarios with a relative amount of frequency throughout the genre as a whole. The story surrounding Zombie Apocalypse, unfortunately, leaves the uninfected with more questions than answers.

In this scenario, the survivors have randomly stumbled upon the very hideout where a doctor has recently discovered the cure and then fled, leaving only enough of the antidote for the group that found it. Because escape game. However, the objective to “locate the vial of the cure and you will escape,” also creates quite the head-scratcher. The zombies are closing in on the hideaway, which is completely unchanged by completing the task in the game. The target goal is not to release a cure, ridding the world of this disease. It is not to find a way to contact other survivors to procure assistance. It is to consume a vial of the antidote and then exit the door that was entered through, to once again face the masses of the undead and an almost assured slaughter.

Darkness fills the main room of the hideaway as survivors first stumble in. In fact the room would have nearly no light at all, if not for the television screen, installed to provide a clock and hint system, in the corner emitting its overpowering glow. The overall lack of light in the room is about as immersive as it gets; without it, the other flaws in the scenic design would be even more evident.

There are minimal set pieces, save for an orange parking cone, in the first area encountered. Furniture is nonexistent until later in the game, and then plays little part in the story telling or immersion. As survivors unlock the other rooms in the experience, more appropriate props and compartments appear, but never enough to convince anyone that this is an actual hideaway. Throughout the game, walls remain barren and colorless, light continues to be limited (except for flashlights provided), and the designs in each room continue to underwhelm. A handful of story appropriate pieces are just too few and far between to make the design feel cohesive and immersive.

Each puzzle in a game needs to feel connected to the storyworld in a way that makes sense. These puzzles lack that connection in most instances. One unnecessarily frustrating moment involves a storage locker with each compartment sealed by an identical rotating padlock. With none of the puzzles identifying which lock that sequence opens, the already tedious task is made worse by those locks being turned backwards, facing the lockers.

Zombie Apocalypse also lacks in general puzzle amount. There aren’t many tasks to do in this game, and of those none of them stand out as particularly creative. Clues are often disjointed and point teams in the wrong direction to start their solving. Several puzzles failed to fit the theme of the room, making them arbitrary distractions from the main goal.

Escape House Los Angeles is, at its best, an entry-level escape room in all categories. However, Zombie Apocalypse does not fall under the recommended category for new escapers, as it has potential to inspire diminishing returns from a newcomer to the genre. Zombie Apocalypse is one of those games that is likely to evoke the dreaded notion of, “That’s what an escape game is? Well then I guess I don’t like escape games!”

The team at Escape House Los Angeles are very gracious and accommodating, and the lobby is comfortable and inviting. This made it all the more unfortunate that the game itself does not live up to such a positive first impression.  At least we’re not infected, probably?

#TylerForgotToTakeAPic

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Venue: Escape House Los Angeles

Location: North Hollywood, CA

Number of Games: 2

GAME SPECIFIC INFORMATION:

Duration: 60 minutes

Capacity: 6 people

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

Cost: $30 per person