Escape Games at the River: The Forgotten Pharaoh (Palm Springs)

The second best room in Palm Springs (that we’ve done)

The recent discovery of a pyramid, has set the world’s imagination afire. Rumors of a mysterious Pharaoh and an ancient curse have been circulating in the media. You have assembled a team of leading archaeologists to join you on your mission to reach the inner tomb and discover the identity of this forgotten Egyptian king.

You must discover the inner tomb, identify the Pharaoh, and escape within 60 minutes, or else you too may fall victim to the Pharaoh’s curse!”

We initially visited ‘Escape Games at the River’ to do their ‘Secret of the Dragon’s Spire’ room but unfortunately it was fully booked for the day, rather than wasting the journey it seemed to make sense to try out another room, so ‘The Forgotten Pharaoh’ was our choice.

Like the other rooms at ‘Escape at the River’ they put a little bit of extra effort into everything so even the door to the room was decorated. You enter the room and there is some nice theming and you can instantly see a few places to start.

This was a darker room but they gave a good number of decent head torches so visibility was never an issue, Liz gets very mad at dark rooms so this saved me a lot of headaches!

I’d say the room was linear and you knew when you had everything you needed to do a puzzle and it was straightforward enough to work out where you should go next. I particularly enjoyed one aspect of the room but there were also a few little areas that were frustrating. Some of the puzzles felt like a bit of a copout, think printed A4 pieces of paper that have a puzzle on them, but Liz seemed to have no problems doing them so maybe it was just me who didn’t like them.

This is a solid room and we had a good time. We didn’t leave with the same glow we did after doing their other room, but it was enjoyable and I think when we came out we felt like we had ended the day on a high after some poor rooms at another location in Palm Springs.

PUZZLES

There was a mix of puzzles, including one which would be classed as a physical puzzle – not overly so though so you don’t need to worry about your fitness level by any means.  As you would expect from a room with egyptian theming there were one or two puzzles which revolved around that, but generally there was nothing in here that was exceptional, although there were a couple of things we hadn’t seen before.

It wouldn’t be a spoiler to let you know that one of the puzzles uses a combination dial padlock so if you’re not familiar with this type of lock then you may want to look up how these work before you go in. This room was fairly padlock heavy, but perhaps I’m old school as I quite like the excitement of working out a combination to a padlock.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

The theming is decent in the room and although not up to the same standard as their ‘Secret of the Dragon’s Spire’ room, it still looks good. The immersion was good and at one point one of the puzzles had a bit of an Indiana Jones feel about it – which I nearly messed up.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Clues were delivered via a TV screen mounted in the room, this also had the countdown on it. The GM was attentive and provided nudges if we were being stupid (we often were), and gave us clues when we requested them. The GM also kindly gave us instructions on how to make that damned combination dial padlock work!

ANYTHING ELSE

Although not the best room at this location, it is still the second best room we did in Palm Springs, second only to their ‘Dragon’s Spire’ room, but that room is a different level all together. After the game we had a chat with the owner Charlie and he walked us though the room then sorted us out for a booking the following day.

Success / Failure

Final Rating: 

Team: 2 people

Address: 71800 Hwy 111, Suite A-210, Rancho Mirage, CA 92270

Website: https://escapegamesattheriver.com