For us, not a Wonderland.
Come join the Mad Hatter on an epic journey through the magic of a wonderous land!
We were in Cape Coral visiting family, so between sunning ourselves by the pool and eating far too much food, we thought we should try and find an escape room to play. I must admit that we had read some reviews about Escape the Cape and they weren’t overly favourable, but as we were only five minutes away we thought it was worth a punt – they couldn’t be that bad…right? MindHatter was the newest and apparently most advanced (in terms of difficulty) of their games, so we thought it was the logical choice for us.
Escape The Cape is located in a small strip mall type of location that has restaurants, bars and plenty of parking. When we arrived we were greeted by our host, Sam, and invited to take a seat in their small waiting room. I’d recommend not arriving too early for your game, otherwise you run the risk of hearing other teams over the speakers as the GM runs the games from the reception area.
The briefing took place in reception, although all it really covered was what padlocks were and how to use them. Oh, and not to touch things with ‘caution’ tape on them. Also, oddly we were told how many rooms we would find which took away the surprise. Equally odd, there was no story briefing at all so we were just shown to the room and then left to our own devices.
IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN
The set design wasn’t terrible, we’ve certainly seen worse. But we’ve also seen better. The rooms we did encounter, followed the whole ‘Alice in Wonderland’ theme and the items located in them didn’t feel out of place.
The spaces were a good size and other than one section, larger teams would have no issues moving around the space. Actually, the same probably goes for users with less mobility, there were no steps and no need to crawl or move through tight spaces. Lighting was dark at times, but other than one area, it was ok to see.
There was ambient noise being played in the room, but probably my biggest gripe was that at all times in the room we could hear people talking/laughing in the reception area. Nothing takes away immersion like hearing exterior noises.
At certain times, when we solved a puzzle there was an announcement over the speaker system that said “A door has opened”. It’s nice to have this announced so we didn’t miss it, but I couldn’t help but feel even a simple bell on the door would have been more in keeping with the theme.
PUZZLES
A notepad and pen were kindly provided, which proved to be very useful! Unfortunately we didn’t gel with the puzzles in this game and felt more frustrated than anything else, literally from the first puzzle.
The puzzles were all based around the Alice in Wonderland theme and generally included; observation, searching, maths, decoding, directions, colours, and audio. There were mostly padlocks but also some tech to make things a little different.
I was looking over our notes for this game and it’s just reminded me how very much we didn’t get on with the puzzles in this game and I think it’s due to the lack of signposting. There were a lot of things that we did and thought ‘how were we supposed to know to do that’? The first puzzle was ambiguous and really set the tone for how the rest of the game was going to go.
We did have a few puzzles that made sense and we made up a lot of time, but just as we were getting going, we’d then hit another puzzle that made no sense at all. One puzzle later on in the game should have been simple but I’m not sure if they did something wrong but the message it gave made no sense and it actually meant the opposite – we lost a lot of time and increased our frustration levels massively here! Oh, and another puzzle just felt like a massive time sink to slow teams down.
GM/CLUE SYSTEM
One thing that really annoys me with escape rooms is when there is a limit on clues. People pay enough for this experience so I don’t understand why they should be penalised when they need help – just let everyone play how they want to play! So yes, as you may have guessed, the policy at Escape the Cape is that you get three ‘free’ clues, then each additional clue costs two minutes. Although I’m not sure if that comes off your actual game time or is just added to your finish time.
When clues were needed you had to request them by waving at the camera and then a message would appear on the screen with the clue. Annoyingly they were less of a clue and more of a ‘here’s the answer’ as it was so detailed it practically told you how to solve the puzzle.
I believe we used two or three clues in MindHatter, one for the stupid early puzzle that made no sense. Another for the puzzle that seemed to say the opposite of what it meant, and then one for a search fail (standard). For the most part when we requested the clues they came through quickly, but I do recall having to wait a while for one of them.
ANYTHING ELSE
In hindsight, we should have just listened to the reviews. We found our time in MindHatter turned us into the Mad Hatter rather than leaving us in Wonderland. The puzzles were frustrating, and the ending was very flat.
When we completed the final puzzle, the GM appeared and said “Well done, do you want a team photo?” and then informed us we were on the leaderboard. Rather than adding our name to it, they simply said to wipe off any other team and add our name. It just felt like once our game was done, they wanted to usher us out of the building as quickly as possible.
Success / Failure
Final Rating:
Operation | |
Puzzles | |
Room Design | |
GM/Clues | |
Excitement |
Team: 2 players – escaped in 39:04
Address: 728 SW Pine Island Rd #16, Cape Coral, FL 33991, United States
Website: https://www.escapethecapefl.com/
Leave a Reply