EscapeTime Escape Rooms (Annapolis) - "The Secret Society"

Updated: Apr 12

LOCATION:  Annapolis, Maryland, USA

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📝 ETR DECODER

🔑 GAME: Secret Society
📅 DATE PLAYED: February 27,, 2021
🎬 GENRE: Mystery
🧠 DIFFICULTY (Based on 2 ppl): 8/10
👥 TOTAL # OF PLAYERS: 2-10 ppl
🕒 LENGTH OF TIME: 60 Mins.
💰 PRICE: $29.00/ pp
☎️ BOOKING TYPE: Private
🔓 ESCAPED/ COMPLETED?: Yes

📖 THE STORY

The year is 1776, and there's talks of a secret society organizing a plan to take over the world. There's an initiation requirement. In order for you and your group to join, you must solve all of their puzzles! Do you have what it takes?

Video above is property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

🎯 HIT THE BULLSEYE

For the most part, the set design had a secret society ritualistic ambience which made us feel like we stepped foot onto the set of "The Skulls". As soon as you enter, you are presented with a spacious dimly-lit room draped with dark red walls and gold accents. From the flickering candles on the chandelier to the wall fixtures all around the room, we were prepared to test our wits!
The storyline was unique in a sense that our mission wasn't to stop something or someone, but to prove ourselves worthy enough to be apart of it. In doing so, the objective was clear and most of the puzzles went along great with the game.
Some of the things that you needed to find were cleverly hidden and required a unique way of solving them in order to unlock the next task.

🧩 MISSED THE MARK

As mentioned before, "The Secret Society" is mainly played in a dim-lit room w/ flickering candles in the chandelier above. Additional lighting options would've helped get through a lot of the puzzles. We understand that this game takes place in the year 1776, but usable props could've easily been added like candles and lanterns.
There's a fine line between props for set décor and red herrings. If you have props that are able to be lifted and examined with clearly no use for it that's fine. But when you purposely have props with writings on them which can be misleading based on other puzzles you have in the room, those are red herrings. This took away from the actual puzzles in the room and wasted precious time from the players from what they really came to do - solve actual puzzles.
There were a couple of puzzles that we were struggling on and it was quite obvious on camera. When finally asking for a hint, our game master told us a hint that was for puzzles we've already solved. Not only that, it was marked as a "hint used" for us. Whether you're a competitive player or not, it's frustrating that we had to ask about something only to confirm that it's already been solved. Also, a nudge in the right direction would be helpful unless the player's specifically requested "not" to be nudged.
One of the items didn't work and the gamemaster had to come in and give us what was inside. In doing so, we thought that was all that was inside since it was handed to us by her and we missed another item that was still inside the object. This hindered our progress of moving forward with the game and no nudging hints were given after we still continued to search the room for items.
There's a tech item in the room that felt out of place for the year 1776. There should be another way of inputting passwords to go along the theme of the room. It was also a bit hard to use considered it's limited functionalities and how we had to reference it numerous times for certain "inputs" and "outputs".

🏹 TAKE A SHOT?

There is definitely a lot of secrecy in this room that you will feel the need to research in order to prove yourself. If you enjoy digging into the history of secret societies and finding out the various ties between them, you might just have what it takes for them to make you their next member!

Photos above is property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

*** We regret to inform this game is no longer available for booking but check out other games on their website***

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(If you do decide to try this game, give us a shoutout or tag us on social media so we know you heard it from "ESCAPETHEROOMers"!)

Disclosure: We thank EscapeTime Escape Rooms for comping our tickets for this game. Although complimentary admission was generously provided, it does not impact our opinion on the review whatsoever.