Welcome witches and warlocks,
I recently had the pleasure of attending the Cannibal’s Den Escape Room by Questroom and thought I would offer up some thoughts for my fellow escape room enthusiasts. To best describe the story, I will use my own summary:
“We wake up imprisoned in a cage, trying to remember how we got to this place. Soon it becomes clear that someone has trapped us here on purpose, and they have a taste for human flesh. Now, we must do everything that we can to escape before dinnertime.”
At this point it seems like the big reveal is one of the major tricks in any good escape room. As such, it seems like most require the guests to be somehow blindfolded on entering the playing field. After the fairly standard audio recording/preamble, the lights came on and we were able to remove our blindfolds. The killer was standing in the room with us, about ready to torture my friend, before being called away on other business. With the psychopath out of the way for a while, we had to figure out how to escape our captivity, and his lair, before he returned.
About a week ago I reviewed a pirate themed escape room that, at the time, had my favorite beginning of any room I have ever experienced. Well, this one topped that beginning by not only using a similar tactic, starting us in captivity, but also separating our group immediately. From here, it became clear that we would have to think differently about how to escape the cannibal’s lair as we had to approach our situation with a survivalist’s mentality.
As mentioned above, the puzzles themselves were less about decoding hidden messages as they put the focus entirely upon working with the tools provided to reason our way out of a bad situation. Without giving too much away, there was more than one MacGyver moment where we had to combine the few pieces of junk we found lying around to make something that would free us or put us in reach of another object we needed. From a thought process standpoint it was a complete change of pace that took some time to adjust to, but it was also so wonderfully in theme that it heightened the entire experience.
The sets we were moving around in were absolutely incredible. There was a simplicity to the opening room that made it immediately imposing while the subsequent rooms we moved through were both horrifying and chilling. I especially appreciated the amount of detail in the final room where we saw news clippings with a Freddie Lounds byline (which should be familiar to fans of the novel “Red Dragon” or its various adaptations) and found a journal with entries that ranged from pertinent to chilling.
All in all, the puzzles in this escape room are so focused on survival that it is perfect for those who watch horror movies and think to themselves, “I could live through that situation.” The sets, objects, and premise are so well executed that I wish I could experience it for the first time all over again. Fans of the character Hannibal Lecter or those looking for a different approach to puzzle solving are sure to love this escape room.
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