Escape Hour Austin - "Lab Rats"

Updated: Apr 7

LOCATION:  Austin, Texas, USA

Photo above has been provided by Escape Hour Austin

📝 ETR DECODER

🔑 GAME: Lab Rats
📅 DATE PLAYED: August 9, 2019
🎬 GENRE: Adventure
🧠 DIFFICULTY (Based on 9 ppl): 8.5/10
👥 TOTAL # OF PLAYERS: Up To 18PPL
🕒 LENGTH OF TIME: 60 Mins
💰 PRICE: $33/PP
☎️ BOOKING TYPE: Private
🔓 ESCAPED/ COMPLETED?: Yes

Our second location to visit in Austin, Texas was at Escape Hour Austin (previously known as 15 Locks). Escape Hour Austin is in the back of the complex and there's plenty of parking available. The lobby area is quite spacious and there’s a unique “lock” lesson piece on the wall in case you need a brief tutorial on how to operate the many locks that they have (strongly suggested for new players) before you enter their rooms.

We have heard many great things about the rooms here especially this one called “Lab Rats” so we are excited to try it with our friends. We have a total of 9 experienced players tackling this room today (minimum players required for this room is 8). Two of them have played the room before but haven’t experienced it fully so they decided to come back to play it for the second time. We’ve never experienced this type of escape room before where it can be played again for new experiences so we’re very curious to see what that’s about. The story is that we’ve volunteered ourselves for a group experiment and we are assigned teams in different color zones and have to work together to solve the puzzles. We were a few minutes late and the team had already started so we’re literally thrown into the room feeling like lab rats running around and have no idea what’s going on. The room is designed to be very vibrant with 3 different colors of red, yellow and blue. Brandon and I were assigned to separate groups and started to work on puzzles right away. I have to give props to the puzzle designer of this room as I don’t know they're able to intertwine each of the rooms with each other. It forces you to work together but from so many different angles. The puzzles were all unique in its own way as well. The time call outs and utilization of player’s roles felt very board game like. You must strategize what is the best move. The only thing I could've hope for in this room was a stronger ending. Other than that, it was pretty perfect. We successfully got out of the lab and I think it was safe to say that everyone had a workout (physically AND mentally). I was literally sweating by the end.

This room is great for team bonding! In order for you to succeed, you have to work together with everyone and communicate constantly. If you decide to hog onto a piece or a puzzle or do not share new information with each other on what’s in your room, you’re destined to fail. We now understand why this could be played again as you don't really get to experience every room if you don’t choose to. We loved every bit of this room design and enjoyed having a strong team playing this game with us as everyone made important contributions in order for us to successfully escape as lab rats! If you have played this room, feel free to share your experience or fun stories with us!

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(If you do decide to try this room, please remember to let them know that "ESCAPETHEROOMers" sent you!)

** We don't want to go into detail and ruin any surprises for you, but you want more info like if the room is a multi-room or what other additional tips we can provide to you, feel free to email us.

Disclosure: We thank Escape Hour Austin for inviting us to be their first beta testers for the game. Although complimentary admission was generously provided, it does not impact our opinion on the review whatsoever.