5 Wits: Tomb, Espionage, Deep Space, Drago’s Castle (Syracuse)

Worth playing just for the automated resets

5 Wits is a live-action, highly interactive, and completely immersive adventure experience unlike anything else that exists.

With a headline like that we knew we had to check out 5 Wits when we were in Syracuse. At the time of writing, 5 Wits have 6 locations in the USA and games are generally duplicated across their sites.

Some friends of ours had played 5 Wits when they visited the USA earlier in the year and said that we had to play them. Not so much because of the puzzles or anything like that, but simply because as a concept and how the games are made really is quite unique. So, our first day in Syracuse we made sure to head to Destiny USA to play all four games available at this location.

I’m going to stray away from our usual review format for these games as they all follow the same format so it would be pointless to try and write a review for each game individually. So I’ll summarise the things that are the same, and then have a little piece on each game.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

These games are not your usual 60 minute escape room experience, instead they are 30 minutes long and run with little to no GM involvement as they are all automated. What is really clever is that when you play, you’re essentially doing the reset for the next team. This model enables 5 Wits to get teams through the games very quickly indeed.

All the experiences start by walking through a large themed door in the lobby, then down a corridor to the room entrance which is also themed. There are lockers there too so you can dump your stuff if you need to. Briefings take place on a screen outside the rooms, and then once that is over, in you go!

All games had beautiful set design and you really can’t fault them for the effort they’ve put in to make the games look good. Each game also had music playing through-out, or at least ambient noise to help you forget that you were in a large shopping mall. The games are all designed so that they push you through to the next game, so I’d imagine that you could get pushed through the game even if you don’t complete the puzzles for the room you’re in.

After the game, you go back into reception and then you can see your score on the screen above the original themed door you walked through. This screen will show how you did and how you compared to previous teams who played – with a maximum score of 99.

Tomb

The first game we played was ‘Tomb’ and it was a good introduction to how their games work. The lighting in this game was low, but never really an issue. Theming was impressive and the spaces we encountered were all a good size, so larger groups can easily fit.

Puzzles were decent although like many of the games here we found some of them to be a bit repetitive and at times tedious. Puzzles were generally; observation, logic, pattern recognition, and memory.

RATING – 3.5  (24 mins)

Deep Space

This game easily had the most impressive start of all of the games and it was certainly a wow factor – I’d love to see a start like this happen in other escape rooms. Once we got over the epic start, it was down to business – and a lot of touching everything to work out what we had to do.

Deep Space had a different vibe to Tomb, with more flashing buttons and general space ship feels. Set dressing was once again spot on. This room was loud, very loud and at times it felt like it bordered on too loud as we struggled to hear each other even when standing close by.

A lot of this game felt like a mix of a video game and ‘keep talking and nobody dies’, it was non-stop from start to end and a lot of guesswork on what we were supposed to be doing next. This game was probably the most apparent that we were resetting for the next team, but it was really interesting to see how they did it.

The last puzzle was most definitely our least favourite experience of the day and we really couldn’t wait for it to be over. The tech seemed a little glitchy and combine that with not really knowing what we were doing, and having our ears blasted by the extremely loud music, it was not a fun time.

RATING – 3.5 (32 mins)

Espionage

Once again, a game that started strong with the set design using visual effects to make it feel like something was happening, even though it clearly wasn’t. It wouldn’t be an ‘espionage’ game without lasers, and this game had plenty of them!

The puzzles in Espionage were all in keeping with that theme. There were lasers, did I mention that already? But on top of the lasers, there was some light maths, some crawling (but could have waited for a door to open to avoid crawling), logic, puzzles involving colours, and then a fast paced end to the game.

The last couple of puzzles felt like they went on forever and we’re pretty sure that they slowed a timer down just to enable us to actually complete it (that was nice). But with the lack of assistance from gamesmasters you’re kinda on your own here.

RATING – 3.5 (22 mins)

Drago’s Castle

If Disney decided to open an escape room experience, then this game would be it – the theming felt like it would have been perfect to be located in Disneyland, not Destiny USA. Starting off with a storybook in the entrance way, and then we found ourselves trapped in the game.

Puzzles in this game felt like they were quite drawn-out, to the extent where we got a little bored with some. The first puzzle was very physical, and then we had some observation/searching, logic (a few of them) and a physical-esque puzzle. One puzzle heavily involves colours so if there is a colour-blind person on your team then they may struggle with that one.

This was the first game where we found the negative with the 5 Wits model. We completed one of the rooms quite quickly, but evidently the team in front of us was struggling. This meant we had about five minutes just sitting in the room waiting for the doorway to open to enable us to move through to the next space – this really killed the momentum.

We also got an insight into how they help teams too. In one space we were probably being a little slow/dim, so automated hints came through the speaker system that helped make a logic puzzle a little simpler.

This was probably our most favourite of the games at 5 Wits.

RATING – 3.5 (26 mins)

ANYTHING ELSE

If you’re an escape room enthusiast (or an owner) and are fascinated by ways that escape rooms can be run to be pretty much fully automated, then 5 Wits is a must play. Ok, the puzzles got repetitive and annoying at times, and if you were too quick and a team was ahead of you then you’d have to wait. But if you can get over that, then these are interesting games to play.

Success / Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 2 players – escaped in various times

Address: 10351 Destiny USA Dr, Syracuse, NY 13204, United States

Website: https://5-wits.com/