The Escape Game, an escape room chain with locations across the country, opened its first Georgia location at The Battery in April 2019. Atlanta has a mix of escape room chains and independent businesses. The Escape Game is one of the bigger chains to open in Atlanta and the company continues to expand. So far, our escape room team has successfully completed two rooms here, Prison Break and Special Ops: Mysterious Market. We enjoyed the rooms so much that we already purchased discounted gift cards to return and play two more rooms: The Heist and Gold Rush. Currently, I think this is one of the better escape room businesses in Atlanta, but it's also the most expensive.
My first experience with The Escape Game was in Nashville (https://bit.ly/2JVkc4j) which is where the company started. At the time of writing this review, I've played a total of 61 escape rooms, mostly in the Atlanta area. I've seen a lot when it comes to room and puzzle designs, from amateur-looking productions to bigger-budget movie-studio-quality sets. The Escape Game Atlanta leans towards the latter. In general, the production quality of escape rooms in town continues to rise. Competition is good.
Right now, The Escape Game Atlanta offers five rooms. In order, from least difficult to most difficult (difficulty rated by the company), they are:
1. Playground - 12 capacity, 6/10 difficulty
2. Gold Rush - 8 capacity, 7/10 difficulty
3. The Heist - 8 capacity, 8/10 difficulty
4. Special Ops: Mysterious Market - 8 capacity, 8/10 difficulty
5. Prison Break - 8 capacity, 9/10 difficulty
If you want to play a room with only your group and no random strangers, you have to fully book out a room. Current pricing at The Escape Game Atlanta is $34.99 per person per room. After taxes and fees, it works out to be $37.09 per person. So if you want to book out one of the 8-person rooms, it would cost roughly $300. When I played the "Nashville" room at The Escape Game Nashville, less than a year prior to our first room here, it cost $31.99 per person (about $35 after taxes and fees). The Escape Game brand is the priciest of the escape rooms I've played. Usually, my friends and I spend less than $30 (and many times, under $20) per person per room after various discounts and deals, but not many discounts and deals exist for The Escape Game.
In order to get a discount to The Escape Game Atlanta, you must first play a room. After that, you unlock two offers (or at least, we did). They are:
1. Book one of the next available rooms immediately for 40% off.
2. Get 15% off gift cards and merchandise from the store before leaving.
We took advantage of the 15%-off discount and purchased gift cards which we immediately turned around and used to book our next room on a future date. So instead of $37.09 per person after taxes and fees, our next room was $31.53 per person after taxes and fees.
At The Escape Game, you get what you pay for. Compared to a lot of the rooms I've played, The Escape Game's rooms are higher quality and truer to life. Also, the design and build-outs of their check-in and seating areas are nicer and they seem to do a great job with branding and marketing with good-looking, professionally-staged photos and even online 3D models of the rooms (I haven't seen any other escape room business do that).
The Escape Game follows the conventional escape room rules. You have 60 minutes to solve a room and you get the standard 3 clues. You can ask for extra clues, but it's unclear to me how your time is affected. Here are my spoiler-free thoughts on the two rooms we've played thus far.
[Prison Break - solved with 30 seconds left on the clock]
Prison Break is The Escape Game's hardest room and we almost lost it. It was a little bit stressful, but exciting. What I liked most about this room (and others like it) is your group is split into separate jail cells to start. This forces the groups in each cell to work together to break out. The setting is 1950s so not only is the prison dirty and grimey, but it feels old-timey too. Cody checked us in and Ross was our gamemaster for this one. They were great.
[Special Ops: Mysterious Market - solved with 12:24 left on the clock]
In Special Ops: Mysterious Market, you and your group play as field agents investigating a street market in North Africa. This room takes a cool, unexpected turn. There are videos with some decent, though at times corny, acting and good production values (especially for an escape room). What impressed me the most was all the technology. In general, The Escape Game's rooms are not cheap to build. They obviously pour a lot of money into each new location. Jaime was our gamemaster for this room. She was super friendly and nice.
Parking at The Battery Red, Green, and Purple Decks is free for the first 4 hours on non-game/event days and first 2 hours on game/event days. I recommend parking in the Battery Red Deck (navigate your GPS there) and exiting on level 3 to find The Escape Game. read more