The Heist

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The Escape Game, a company born in Nashville, has spread it’s fun and creative rooms to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. We were lucky enough to review their rooms at the Grapevine Mills shopping mall. The Escape Game is a great addition to the fun and lively atmosphere of the mall, which also has an arcade, bowling alley, and aquarium if you’re looking to plan a family trip. The parking is plentiful, as it usually is at malls, and the company is located at ground level (for anyone with accessibility issues).

The staff of The Escape Game is absolutely fantastic. You’re met with a big ol’ warm Texan greeting, and each of the Game Masters are incredibly well-rehearsed and friendly. When your game is about to start, you’ll be led down an incredibly long corridor of red doors to your escape.

While the lobby of The Escape Game is fairly small, with only two benches for seating, an entire food court is just outside its doors, ready to serve you if you are waiting for your game to start. Merchandise lines a display shelf on the wall, with exclusive shirts only available to escapees of enough rooms. A minor criticism of the lobby would be the awkward user interface of the electronic waiver forms. If you plan on doing multiple rooms in a row, a large touchscreen will ask you to fill in each waiver form separately. Additionally, the touch-keyboard is too big and too low to be used like a regular keyboard.

The Heist had a beautifully produced introduction video that covered the rules and backstory of the game: you’re infiltrating the office of a known stolen art collector, and only have one hour to find where he has hidden an authentic Monet painting.

The Heist lent itself to unique shifts in mood between the various stages of the game. The artistic direction really shines through in each chamber. The museum looks exactly how it should: polished, pristine, and untouched. The chaotic study imitates that of an committed art collector; artifacts and sculptures scattered left and right, paintings decorate the walls, and shelves and shelves of reference books are tucked away neatly. The Heist might very well contain one of the finest decorated examples of an “eccentric collector’s study” room in the industry today.

The puzzles of The Heist were all very appropriately themed and integrated into the props throughout the room. The puzzle props were beautifully made as well; almost everything was solidly built and worked exactly like it should’ve. All the puzzles made sense, with no grand leaps in logic, and there are plenty of puzzles to keep larger groups entertained.

Unfortunately during our play through, the components of two of the puzzles did not operate as planned. The first one we actually didn’t realize wasn’t working and solved it despite the missing pieces. For the second we relied heavily on the help of our Game Master to walk us through the puzzle. Despite the setbacks, the overall room quality and puzzles of The Heist were very strong, and we throughly enjoyed the experience.

Have you played The Heist at any of The Escape Game’s locations? We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences down below!