You know what they say about the gift that keeps giving? Well, we love it when one experience leads…read moreus to another, like how reading a good book sends us to a good TV series, or, in this case, a fantastic escape room spurs us on to discover ... the Human Crane!
Game On! UNLOCKED Arcade is one of six escape rooms that UNLOCKED offers, in addition to a couple of tabletop games, which, sadly, as a duo, we probably won't be checking out. In spite of what it says at Escape Games Global, we DID NOT ESCAPE with 3 puzzles left, but we enjoyed ourselves so much at UNLOCKED, we headed to Dave & Buster's that same week because one of us is an arcade virgin, and we appreciated even more just how immersive Game On! UNLOCKED Arcade was!
UNLOCKED is located in a business complex that also houses an interesting café downstairs, but we did not try that out this visit because we had dinner and The Outsiders musical waiting for us at Segerstrom. Parking was plentiful and we walked by the shared restrooms on reaching the top of the stairs. We were met by Dom, our genial game host, who had no objections that we arrived early so that we were able to get done in exactly 60 minutes. In fact, the timing turned out to be great because we had just enough time to do the room, food and show.
After declining Dom's offer of the use of the restrooms and signing the online waiver that is also logged with Escape Games Global, we were shown into UNLOCKED's small but super-comfy lobby to watch the nice introductory video. Dom made sure to ask up front if we wanted to be prodded throughout the game (yes) or to have hints given only when we asked (er, no!), and also to point out the timer in the room.
The video games, claw machine, skee-ball (favourite!) and other classic arcade games installed for Game On! UNLOCKED Arcade helped to provide a fully immersive and on-theme experience. It was interactive and, interestingly, turned the competitive nature of arcade games into an exercise in teamwork. This room was what we consider Third Generation (G3), because it was pretty high-tech, even as we were stymied by a number of hands-on arcade favourites and the controller of Gameboy generation games. Our 60 minutes was supposed to be spent on winning tickets and prizes for our birthday boy best friend, but really, it was spent on playing the games so much we forgot we had to escape the room! The puzzles and challenges were linear for the most part, but the entire experience was really a game within a ton of games so it was hard to pick a starting point. Once we got started, though, we were able to keep going. If we had a group of four, we would have been able to work four stations concurrently, but as a duo, (single really because one of us was a strictly non-electronic games person - TG for the cipher and other material games!) it was more challenging.
Game On! UNLOCKED Arcade was more pricey than our most recent number of out-of-state games, but it was right on par with SoCal prices, and, in fact, extremely good value for the amount of fun we had, and that it is located in Costa Mesa. We appreciated the option of using Venmo for tips and it was a nice change to receive a Polaroid in lieu of a digital picture. It would have been the perfect room for us to play before watching The Who's Tommy - but The Outsiders was also an exceptional production. Can't wait to top this five-star experience with UNLOCKED, though - the Game On! UNLOCKED Arcade certainly set a high bar!