From its inception, Escape Authority has prided ourselves in being the site you can always trust. Our reviews are detailed, descriptive, experienced and, perhaps most importantly of all, honest. As a result, our content has been far from just 5 Key games; several have barely earned just 1 Key, while some have received the infamous 0 Keys score. Surprisingly, those negative reviews are as popular, and sometimes even more popular with you, our readers, than the positive ones! And while it is never our goal to seek out bad games, the reality of the industry is they are out there. Believe it or not, we get even less enjoyment from reporting on them than we do in playing them! At the end of the day, all we can do is form honest opinions from the experiences we receive. As always, when choosing the next game you play, we encourage you, our readers, to decide for yourselves.
Escape Authority is honored to announce our 2019 Keys To Greatness – Worst Game winners:
The Inferno
Salvation Room
(Commerce, CA)
Salvation Room entered the crowded Southern California market with genuinely noble intentions. Their product aimed to offer something unique – the area’s first biblical-themed Escape Game attractions. Unfortunately what would play out well on paper proved to be too daunting of a task in real-world execution. Although Salvation Room has closed, it has more than cemented its spot on our most infamous of countdowns. The Inferno, a game themed to a trip to Hell, succeeded in taking guests there for all the wrong reasons. A massive empty space so dark it’s nearly impossible to see puzzles, let alone solve them leads to a second chamber – implied to be Hell itself, full of so much fog that you quite literally can’t see your hand in front of your own face. But when the smoke clears, what’s left is a series of logic leaps that ultimately combine to transform into the lengthiest long-division mathematical equation we’ve ever seen in an Escape Game. This really is Hell.
Click here to read our full review of The Inferno.
Black Site
(Tampa, FL)
Escape Games, by their very nature, should be fun challenges that transport us from our day to day realities, into fantastical worlds wherein we become the stars of the adventure. Unfortunately, our experience in Black Site left us with the stark opposite opinion. This game felt – to us – more like high school homework worksheets and subsequent pop quizzes than it did solving puzzles on a fun night out. With each lock opened, another worksheet would present itself, along with pages upon pages of information that felt more like text book cannon fodder used to gain the next four digit code. At a certain point, enough is enough, even for us – resulting with Black Site being only the second game that we, as a site, ever opted to simply walk out of.
Click Here to read our full review of Black Site.
The Cellar
(40 Locations across the US and Canada)
What if a Laser Tag chain opened a bunch of escape games across North America, but instead of building suitable spaces for them, they simply set them up on tables in their existing Birthday Party Room (you know, when it isn’t being used for, well, birthday parties.) What if, rather than filling that Birthday Party Room with clever and well thought challenges, they simply printed out pages of the most illogical logic puzzles and riddles one is likely to ever encounter? What if this weren’t just a hypothetical, but in fact one of the most widely available Escape Games a potential new player count find, thanks to forty different locations around the United States and Canada? Some games are just so bad that, in our opinion, they are a potential liability to the industry; frustrating new players to the point of thinking “Oh, that’s what an Escape Game is? Well then I don’t like Escape Games.” Key Quest’s The Cellar will forever hold the (dis)honor of being the first game bad enough that we actually walked out. As always, we welcome you, our readers, to form your own decision based on your own experience, but in our opinion, The Cellar is the Worst. Escape Game. Ever.
Click Here to read our full review of The Cellar.
Congratulations to our winners of the first ever Keys To Greatness – Worst Game award!
With nearly 1,000 games played across the site, being picked as one of the best three in the country is a well-earned honor to truly be proud of!
With so many deserving games worthy of recognition, our goal is to ensure these Keys To Greatness awards are attainable to all – not just those with blockbuster budgets that might be otherwise out of reach. As such, it’s important to note that with just one exception, a given game can only win in a single category – but every game will still be qualified to win the coveted Keys To Greatness – Best Game award on June 2, 2019.
*Although the games I’ve personally designed are consistently very highly rated by both enthusiasts and newer players alike, I cannot in good conscience nominate an attraction I created. As such, those games and the venues that call them home have been intentionally omitted from consideration for any Keys To Greatness award.
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