Patient 57

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Breakout KC is among the best escape room facilities in the country. It is well run, well branded, and each of their rooms are well thought out and crisp time and again. While Patient 57 ranks on the lower end of their offerings, it still serves as an example of everything right about the industry.

We have written about the experience getting to Breakout KC in the River Market area – parking is scarce and signage is decent coming from the east and impossible to see coming from the west. Their website is impeccable, however, and GPS absolutely will get you where you need to go. When you do find it, you will be greeted by a small but visually interesting waiting area and one of the most consistently friendly staffs we have ever encountered. Our game master led us to the room and explained the ins and outs of the room, which led to a pre-room video explaining what was going on in the room story. While it was of fine quality, some of our team still felt relatively lost within the story.

Breakout KC tends to have high quality props and set pieces – many of which are homemade. This room was no exception as everything worked as intended with little to no wear and tear visible. Each prop felt appropriate to the theme and made sense in the room as a whole. And, oh that lovely wallpaper! We did run into an issue with an oddly placed group of coat hooks that could be easily solved by aligning them all in one area (or, in fairness, our team paying closer attention when we hung up our coats).

Immersion is usually a strength at this facility, but we felt the room left us a little disjointed, both in terms of how we fit into the story and as we moved out of the main room. There did not seem to be a consistent theme once that happened. There were occasionally overhead announcements that indicated some urgency for escaping the facility but then we were watching surveillance videos of other rooms where no other person in the hospital seemed impacted by these announcements. All in all, while we followed the puzzle progression clearly enough, we did not find the story elements at the same level.

Speaking of the puzzles, we were delighted to find so much variety in the types of puzzles we encountered as well as the means needed to solve them. This room proves that you don’t need to blow people away with technology (there were some great technical elements, but it is certainly not tech-dependent as some rooms can be). The downside for us was the linear nature of the room. It is not a linear room, but the progression seems to go from chunks of things that can be done into a bottleneck. All rooms eventually get that bottleneck, but this came early and that did not relent until we had escaped.

That funneling nature did impact our collective experience in varying ways. Those who were involved in the final half of the room, felt very positively about the overall experience. Those who literally could not fit in the room at that point, had nothing to do. We’ve experienced small secondary rooms before, and it generally works better when those in the primary room still have something to work on. That was not the case here, so we would recommend a smaller group for this room lest you be that person who ends up not contributing the entire time.

All in all, this room would be a thrill for a small group of escapers regardless of their previous experience. However, our experience with six people felt like too many. Four would be our recommended max for this room as nothing requires larger numbers and some aspects are actively hurt the more people you have on your team. Visit Breakout KC in any of their locations in the area to see a business run the right way, even if this room falls a little short of some of their other options.