How to review an escape room on Escapetalk.nl?

We know how hard it can be to write a review on an escape room. The problem, most of the time, is that you can’t give too much information because you’ll spoil it for people who still want to play the room. To help you with writing a complete review, we put together some elements on which you can give your opinion. We also have a few tips on how to give proper feedback.

Elements of a good review

If you’re reviewing an escape room on our website, you’ll be judging four elements with points from 1 to 10: ambiance, puzzles, service and the overall experience. In the review you can easily explain why you gave the amount of points you did.

• Describe the ambiance
  An important part of an escape room is of course the ambiance. Ambiance contributes towards the experience you have. There are a lot of elements that can influence the ambiance, good or bad. Interior, decoration, finishing, use of music and light, the story, and so on. Was everything exactly right, of were there things that threw you off your concentration or dragged you out of the story? For instance: could you hear other people in another room play? Or were there these (famous) red stickers to mark the things you can’t touch?
  
  Not only describe the ambiance in the room, but also the ambiance outside of the room. Were you gazing into a bright fluorescent lamp directly after you left the room? Or was the rest of the location also beautifully decorated? Tell us all about it!
   

• Describe the puzzles
  Again, because of spoilers you can’t tell too much about the puzzles in the room, but you can tell us about what kind of puzzles you came across. Were they mathematic? Linguistic? Logic? Did they require a lot of searching? What did you think about the ratio between them? You can also say something about the puzzles in relation to the story: did they fit the story?
  
  If you look back on all the puzzles, most of the time you can say something about the flow. With flow we mean how fluently a game elapses. Did you have the idea that you made any progress after solving a puzzle? Or were you staring around, searching for the next puzzle when you finally solved one? Was the game progress logical? Or did you keep running into way too hard puzzles?
  
  And how did you feel about the amount of puzzles? Where there too many? Too few? Or was it just right? There are great escape rooms with hardly any puzzles, that doesn't have to be a problem. It all depends on the approach of the room.
   

• Describe the service
  Playing the room is of course the most important part, but it makes a huge difference on how you’re welcomed by the host. If there’s anything (positive or negative) that’s notable about the service, you can also mention this in your review. Did the host take enough time to talk about the experience afterwards? Or did you get the idea you had to leave quickly because there was another group waiting? Were you warmly welcomed? Or did the host obviously got up on the wrong side of the bed?
  
  Not only before and after, but also during the game you have someone who helps you. Did the gamemaster sense the vibe of your group well? Did the hints come on time, too early or too late? Did the way you receive hints work for you? Or did someone suddenly enter the room to help you with a puzzle? This kind of information really helps owners to get an idea on how their staff is treating their customers, so don’t forget to say something about the service!

Besides giving points, you can also add some pros and cons. You’re also able to describe your experience in one sentence in the therefor designated field. This sentence, together with the overall score and the pros and cons, make it easy for a reader to directly see if it’s a positive of a negative review. It seems like some extra work, but don’t skip this part when you really want to write a complete review! 

Tips

To end this article, we have some more tips for you:

• Always stay kind, even though your experience was awful. A lot of cursing is not helpful to anybody. Give a good explanation on why your experience was horrible, that’s something we all benefit from!

• Make sure your review doesn’t contain any spoilers! If you’re not sure if something is a spoiler or not, maybe you should skip that part or try to write around it.

• Be critical! Don’t easily give 1 point (there’s nothing worse) or 10 points (there’s nothing better). We know it’s fantastic for an escape room to get 10 points, but it’s not helping other players to choose a room that fits them. So always stay critical, that’s what reviews are for!

• Give positive feedback. ‘What could be better in this room...’ sounds a lot different than ‘this was awful’. We know it’s hard sometimes after a bad experience, but you should still try! Only then escape rooms might be able to tackle the problem. If you have feedback that you can’t post in a review (because of the spoilers) you can say it to the staff after you’re done playing or send them an e-mail later. A lot of owners are constantly trying to improve their rooms, and we’re sure that any feedback is welcome. Complaints are also better off discussed with the escape room first. This gives them the chance to fix any mistakes.