This weekend I revisited The Basement Escape Room in Sylmar, CA. Sylmar is about a half hour or so northwest of Los Angeles. It’s a trek to get to, but it’s definitely worth it.
I first did The Basement in October of 2014. It was the new kid on the block for escape rooms in the Los Angeles area, but the only one that seemed to be really horror themed. The premise is, you’re locked in the Basement of serial killer Edward Tandy and need to escape before 45 minutes is up or else the gas comes into the room and puts you to sleep (forever).
Like most escape rooms, it’s filled with puzzles and clues that lead to more puzzles and clues that lead to more puzzles and clues. You really have to pay attention to everything and try everything you can. There are secrets that you would never even think about, which is why you really need to try and do anything and everything to find clues.
You can have up to 12 people in the Basement. That’s 12 people scrambling in all directions trying to find clues and figuring out puzzles. This is good and bad in my opinion. The good – obviously the more people, the more spread out you can be and cover more area and discover clues faster. The bad – it’s borderline chaos! Also, with that many people, you will probably miss out on seeing/discovering something cool because someone else already got to it. Also, when the majority of people are trying to figure out a puzzle, you have those 12 people gathered around the puzzle. That’s time that could be used to find more clues. Usually this happens towards the end and most clues are already found, but both times I’ve done this, there were times where all of us were at one puzzle trying to figure it out.
The first time I did it, we had 6 people and this past weekend, we had 9. Did those extra 3 matter? Well, we did escape this time. Whether that had to do with the extra people remains to be seen. I don’t think Russell and I doing it the first time made a difference in escaping this time. First off, it was about 9 months ago when we did it, and a lot of the clues had changed and I didn’t remember much of the original experience. Second, it seemed to be a bit easier this time. I know those 2 points contradict each other a bit, but let me explain. When we did this in October, it was new and VERY hard. We had 2 actors in the room with us that seemed to do more harm than good. I don’t remember them pointing us in the right direction/giving us hints that often, but this past weekend, there was one actor and he seemed to help out a bit more. Don’t get me wrong, even with his hints, it was not easy, but it didn’t seem as difficult. I know that the majority of people fail on their first try (like we did in October), so I don’t know if they made changes to help get the success rate up or not. Either way, I still had fun and escaping made the experience that much better.
I probably wouldn’t do it again any time very soon, but only because the clues and what I need to do are fresh in my mind. I hear they change up the clues and placement of them if you go back to try again, but I don’t know if that’s true, and if it is, how much it changes. If you haven’t done it, I HIGHLY suggest doing it. I’ve done quite a few escape rooms from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and the Basement is by far one of my favorites. The production value of it, the little touches they add in to the experience, the setting, the clues, etc, all make this one a great example of what an escape room should be.
I also tried out their new room, The Boiler Room, right before I met everyone for the Basement. The Boiler Room is another escape room, but the maximum amount of people you can have playing is four. I was VERY surprised when we walked in and it surprised me and to keep that surprise, I won’t mention why. No spoilers!
This room is a “Chapter 2” to the Basement. The story continues where the gas didn’t kill you and Edward wanted to keep you alive a little bit longer, so he put you into the Boiler Room. I really like the back story they give their rooms and I really hope there is Chapter 3!
The Boiler Room is a linear escape room, meaning that the clues go in order. So to move onto the next step, you need to figure out the previous clue. This type of escape was refreshing since every other escape room is more about the scattered clues that come together to reach a common exit.
The Boiler Room was fun and definitely had some scares in it. There was one point where Russell screamed and it was the greatest sound I ever heard. In the Basement, you really need to pay attention and search every where for little clues, that doesn’t really apply in the Boiler Room. Everything you need to solve the puzzles is right in front of you. You just need to figure it out. It’s also 10 minutes shorter than the Basement, where as you have 35 minutes to escape opposed to 45 minutes for the Basement.
I’m proud to say, we escaped….from both! It was a good day!
