What do you do when you’re on vacation and the heat index for the entire week is 109° Fahrenheit every day? (No hyperbole—the humidity was like 99%.)
Find an activity with really good AC, of course!
To be fair, as a logic puzzle connoisseur, I probably would have gone to an escape room even if the weather had been perfect and beautiful all week. I love escape rooms, and visiting new escape room places is one of the main benefits of traveling to a different area.
My husband selected Break Out Myrtle Beach since it was close to our hotel. After reading about the different rooms they offer, he picked the hardest one, “The Curse of Volcano Island.”
I joke that the first logic puzzle for any escape room is getting there—I’ve been to a few that required ringing the janitorial staff to get the door code for a nondescript office building, then navigating a labyrinth of halls just to find the front desk. Break Out was easy to locate and well marked, but finding a spot to park took us a moment. They have a small lot accessible via an alley behind the block of buildings, but that wasn't immediately obvious when we first got there.
I have to say, the place felt magical the second we stepped inside, thanks to the super-powerful AC. Did I mention how hot it was all week?
The front reception area also had a few fun photo-op spots. The staff greeted us and said our room would be ready soon, so we took some fun pictures while we waited.
Even though our little group of four—hubby, daughter, father-in-law, and I—arrived early, we didn’t have to wait long before the room was ready. Our game master led us to the room, explained the rules, read us the scenario, and handed us a walkie-talkie.
They had pretty basic rules: clues are only used once, use the walkie-talkie to ask for up to three hints, please don’t break anything, don’t climb on stuff and hurt yourself, and you get one hour.
The Curse of Volcano Island
Scenario: Your plane has crashed in the ocean, and you’ve been able to swim to a tropical island where you discover what appears to be a deserted village. In the distance, a volcano rages, black smoke billowing from its peak. From clues around the island, you gather that there’s a ritual you can perform to appease the gods and break the curse of the island, preventing the volcano from erupting and taking your party’s lives.
The theming and decor were really fun and well done, creating the atmosphere of a primitive island hut at night. Small shipping crates and nooks within the hut held clues and locks. Many of the puzzles required arranging objects like statues and equipment or placing markers on a map.
We were able to figure out most of the puzzles on our own and only needed to ask for one hint. Another puzzle had quite a few layers, and the game master gave us a quick explanation of what to do so we wouldn’t get stuck.
I found one puzzle overly fiddly. It required rearranging a set of painted cubes in several different orientations, then translating the images they made into letters. As my daughter and I tried to quickly put all the pieces together, hubby and father-in-law solved the puzzle much faster using simple guess-and-check.
Overall, we were all satisfied with the puzzle difficulty and escaped in 45 minutes.
My overall rating would be 5 stars. The Curse of Volcano Island is a fun and challenging escape room that’s definitely worth the visit.
I have to say, the theme of the escape room we played while on vacation was kind of perfect considering the upcoming launch of Puzzling Escapes: The Secret of Shipwreck Island on September 15. Tropical islands are a popular theme for escape rooms, and I think readers will really enjoy the new Puzzling Escapes adventure!
Pre-order Puzzling Escapes: The Secret of Shipwreck Island on Amazon
No comments:
Post a Comment