Enigma Escapes is in Tacoma, Washington. The Seattle area is absolutely beautiful, but Tacoma is not as pretty as other areas. Parking at Enigma was cheap and easy, and navigation to the location was easy. The lobby is large, and the staff was hospitable and helpful.
There are four rooms at Enigma. The experience for each room begins in their lobby where you watched a video. The video was played on a tv that should have been much larger, and it covers rules, instructions, and the story, all in one video. The video actors and set designs were pretty weak and cheaply made, but when the video ends, an actor comes running into the room in full costume. That actor builds excitement that immediately immerses you in the story of the room. The live actor element after the video in the lobby was a very nice touch to add immersion.
We played two rooms at Enigma:
The Cure
Mike’s Difficulty Rating: 2 (out of 5)
Their Difficulty Rating: Success Rate 35%
The Cure is a pretty basic room with a lot of generation one locks, but it is a lot of fun. This is actually the kind of room that made me fall in love with escape rooms. It's all about the puzzles. There were a few very creative puzzles, but for the most part the puzzles were not very unique. Designers in most rooms seem to have a lot of difficulty integrating generation one lock puzzles into the story, but these puzzles fit the theme well. The story itself was not unique, but there were two puzzle tools in this room that I've never seen before.
As with most rooms that require you to use a walkie-talkie for hints, communication was easy, but the hints were too vague and not customized to our situation.
Everything in the room worked well, and we had a lot of fun running around the room to solve some of the puzzles.
Sorcerer's Rescue
Mike’s Difficulty Rating: 5 (out of 5)
Their Difficulty Rating: Success Rate 25%
The design and immersion of Sorcerer's Rescue is good. The storyline is creative and fun. Some of the puzzles were quite creative, and the room was large. The room was frustratingly and unnecessarily dark, but the darkness did make the room feel more immersive.
There were a lot of very fun generation two puzzles and locks in this room. The puzzles were fun and pretty.
I would highly recommend doing this room with four to six people. It's too hard for two people. COVID-19 played in big role in making this room harder. The owner of Enigma told us that usually they have live actors in the room with you, but because of COVID, we didn't get to experience that. In addition, we had to wear masks, and the masks made it much harder to do a few of the puzzles.
The worst thing about Sorcerer's Rescue was the hint mechanism. We had to talk to a screen on the wall to get hints, and the hints were prewritten poems. They were not helpful. The hints were just more puzzles, and they weren't actually answers to the questions that we had.
There was a CGI video in Sorcerer's Rescue that was much more impressive than the video that we watched in the lobby before we entered the room.
