A Knight to Remember

It's been just over a year since I first blogged about Denver Escape Room. It was one of the better escape rooms my friends and I had visited. We loved it. So, apparently, did Puzzle Effect -- a company with locations in several states that has now bought Denver Escape Room, taken it over, and re-branded it. They've kept the great rooms intact, though. And to celebrate a friend's birthday this past weekend, we headed up to try two of their rooms we hadn't played before.

There was actually good reason to do these two particular rooms back to back, the way we did: they have a connected story line. First up was Knight + Rook, a room set in a private investigator's office. The P. I. has left behind clues to a kidnapping case involving a missing girl, which you have to decipher to call in a rescue team. In the second room, Rescue lets you play as that team, arriving on site to save the kidnapped girl before a bomb destroys the building where she's hidden.

Both rooms are well-built and immersive environments; it's easy to accept the scenario that you are in a private eye's office or a creepy abandoned warehouse. The puzzles are also well spread out to allow everyone in a group space to work on different things. We had six players when we went, but all of us had our chance to contribute something meaningful to the effort. Knight + Rook was especially good in this regard, with us splitting in half or even working in pairs for much of the hour.

These two rooms were both filled mainly with the combination lock puzzles typical of escape rooms... but with a nice variety of different lock types (and thus, different kinds of codes). Combinations were hidden in a variety of fun ways -- each of the two rooms had some nice "showcase" moments to get the code to some of the locks.

I think I personally helped more in Knight + Rook, finding the puzzles more up my alley. But Rescue was probably the better room of the two, featuring more unique moments. One aspect of it in particular was something I hadn't encountered in an escape room before -- and even seemed a bit subversive of the typical rules that are common to these rooms, if you've done them before.

We succeeded in both rooms, with a couple of clues nudging us along in both cases. (As was the case when Puzzle Effect was Denver Escape Room, they do a good job of not helping you too much too fast, giving you a chance to figure things out on your own. Unless you ask, of course.) Our time was pretty comparable in both. We've now done four of the rooms at Puzzle Effect... but there are still three more we haven't done. But the place impressed again, and I'm sure we'll be back to try those others.

But two rooms weren't quite enough escaping for us on this day. After stopping for lunch, we rather impulsively decided to check out a different location that had come highly recommended. More on that in another day's post...