LOCATION: Los Angeles, California,USA
Photo above is property of Hatch Escapes
Photos above are property of ESCAPETHEROOMers
📝 ETR DECODER
🔑 GAME: The Ladder
📅 DATE PLAYED: April 4, 2024
🎬 GENRE: Adventure
🧠 DIFFICULTY (Based on 4 ppl): 10/10
👥 TOTAL # OF PLAYERS: 4-10 ppl
🕒 LENGTH OF TIME: 90 Mins.
💰 PRICE: $380.00 - $950.00
☎️ BOOKING TYPE: Private
🔓 ESCAPED/ COMPLETED?: Yes
📖 THE STORY
The Ladder is like no other escape room in the world, nor is it entirely an escape room, but rather a fully replay-able immersive experience in which your choices and performance determine the outcome.
Get ready to embark on a 50-year career at Nutricorp, an Omaha-based vitamin company with more than a few dark secrets to hide. Each decade you work there is represented by a different room, from the rockin’ 1950s to the less rockin’ 1990s. In each decade you’ll also work in different positions within the company as you climb the corporate ladder all the way to the top!
Featuring a 90-minute runtime, 5 playable avatars, 8 different sets, and nearly a dozen different endings, The Ladder has been designed to blow your mind not once, not twice, but as many times as you care to visit.
Will you play as a hero or a villain? Will you make your first billion or wind up penniless? And did you ever figure out what was in that mysterious pneumatic capsule? Well, you know what they say: if at first you don’t succeed…you’re probably a talentless hack. Or maybe you should try again…
🎯 HIT THE BULLSEYE
I consider "The Ladder" to be a revolutionary concept in the escape room market, although I technically also wouldn’t call it an escape room, but rather escape room adjacent. There is no escaping required and no time to beat. You are playing against yourselves and your success (or lack of) will open new paths within the ever-evolving storyline. It is unlikely that any two games you play of this will be the same and the concept is designed to make you want to come back to try and better your previous ‘score’.
The story writing is first class. As mentioned, there are numerous paths you can take and each decade begins and ends with video updates, which will differ from team to team, depending on how you play the game and the individual choices made. The acting and video production is also professionally made and just cements the whole experience as one of the most immersive games you’ll ever play.
The theming of the five rooms was top notch. From the mundane and colorless 50’s, to the groovy 60s, and the tech driven 80s, each space is unique and filled with props to interact with. Although the hidden bonus room is not yet complete (we wouldn’t have found it anyway), it was interesting to hear about how you might work to access it and where it might be located – but our host, the game’s designer, wasn’t giving up his secrets that easy.
Like with the unique labyrinth of storylines, the puzzles system is also like no other game I have played. Here, teams are challenged in two ways; with games and with puzzles. The games are designed to be played continuously and often with no way to fully complete them. These are your sources of revenue, the better you do, the more cash you make, and the more successful you become. Games are always highly interactive, requiring precision and teamwork to complete; how efficient are you at sorting letters in the mail room, or connecting calls? Each room contains three different games that you can freely choose between; play as little or as much as you like, the choice is yours! The puzzles, on the other hand, relate directly to the storylines, and like the games, are optional to complete. They are however, extremely well layered and complex. We were warned before the game that the chances of completing them on our first run through The Ladder were extremely low, and he was right, we managed to complete most steps in each, but never a single puzzle in its entirety, which was frustrating.
One of the standout aspects of The Ladder is how important and instrumental teamwork is, it would be impossible for one player to dominate proceedings like with what can occur in typical escape rooms because of how demanding each game and/or puzzle is. When beginning each decade teams receive a list of the different activities available and it is then up to the team to decide how best to use their limited time (15 minutes) to achieve the goals. This means every player is vital to succeeding and will always have something to do! This is a fast-paced game that never slows down, not for one minute.
After finishing we were afforded a little time to walk back through the game to ask some questions and pass on information to one another regarding elements we may have missed, since you are all likely working on different activities in the room. The game is also full of little easter eggs, so now was a good opportunity to ensure we had seen them all.
The variable endings are a great addition and one of the reasons I am sure many people will return to play a second or even third game. Will you get married? Have children? Play the loyal company man, or turn evil? There are so many choices to unlock.
🧩 MISSED THE MARK
Although it is not possible to ‘lose’ The Ladder, every team will make it through to the end and see out the whole story, it did feel incredibly difficult to succeed. The puzzles, in particular (not games), felt near impossible to complete within such a short time period and some of the logic behind them felt a bit far-fetched. I think the idea is that on your first play you will learn ‘how’ best to attempt the puzzles so that you’ll have more chance of success on future visits. While we understand that the idea is to replay the game, for those who cannot afford to spend $95 a head for each run, or who just simply don’t intend to return, it can be frustrating to do so much for so little reward. We definitely felt frustrated by the level of failure in this part of the game.
You need a big team. This both a positive and negative depending on how your team dynamics are, how many friends you have, and how much you want to achieve. For us we ideally like to play escape rooms with 2-4 people. In The Ladder, I would advise a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 8. You really need to throw bodies at each game and puzzle for maximum success, especially the puzzles. We definitely wouldn’t play again with less than 6, because for us, we want to unlock new paths in the story, and unlock the secret bonus room, etc.
Fragility. The Ladder had only been open a matter of days, yet there were already numerous games broken. The designer mentioned that due to how interactive and hands-on each task is, it is likely to stay that way in the future, with different elements going down from time to time. It’s not going to feel great as a player to be spending so much money on a game only to find important and/or fun elements in it are going to be broken.
🏹 TAKE A SHOT?
Despite our frustrations with the difficulty of the puzzles this is still an epic game which is surely going to receive huge and deserved acclaim. The whole concept was a massive labor of love (and money), taking about five years from conception to completion, and even now they continue to tweak and improve things further.
Our recommendation would be to play the game, taking it and its challenges as they are, without worrying too much about what ‘success’ is, and focusing more on enjoying the game around you and all the incredibly well thought out games you can participate in. Players who worry too much about completing the whole game will likely feel frustrated, unless they intend to return and play numerous times, which is certainly no bad thing, it is designed that way!
Notes for a better experience:
Bring at least 6 people
Be organized, assign roles and stick to them
READ all the signage to ensure you understand the instructions for each activity
Stay active, the time pressure in this game is real!
Understand that you are highly unlikely to see and do everything inside, there is too much to do and too little time to complete everything. This is another reason to return for future runs, on your next visit you can try different activities than those you did on the first time.
ℹ️ ADDITIONAL INFO
Parking is not available on site. Free parking is available on the residential streets either side of the escape room.
There is a lobby area with comfortable seating and some cool Hatch merchandise for sale.
Photos above are property of Hatch Escapes
(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 Hatch Escapes for comping our tickets for this game. Although complimentary admission was generously provided, it does not impact our opinion on the review whatsoever.
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