Nothing beats going to a bookstore on a rainy day than ... doing an escape room, of course!…read moreEspecially when the escape room is located right there in the same entertainment complex as the bookstore, so you can do one after the other! At Exit 4 Escape, located a spacious parking space across from the Barnes and Noble and a host of other businesses in West Jordan, Utah, we found the perfect way to spend an hour exercising both our mind and body, with Aspen, our intrepid game host to help us along.
There are four rooms to choose from at Exit 4, and for our first game with them, we chose to do The Lone Wolf Rises, which promised a lot of fun and tongue-in-cheek parody starring a high-tech hidden superhero. It was supposed to be their most difficult room with a challenge level of 3.5 out of 4, so as a duo (the room minimum), we were prepared to run over our time. We booked our game for 11:45am, and we were very happy with their pricing. We had the entire room for our team, which was great, because we prefer to NOT play with strangers. As far as crowdedness was concerned, it worked really well - the room turned out to be perfect for two, and just comfortable for four people who know each other well ...
Exit 4's lobby was very nice, with some merch shelved on the wall and enough seating for 8 - 10 people. The multiple single-gender restrooms were clean, and when we arrived a whole 35 minutes early from shopping at B&N, we were able to start our game at 11am on a Saturday!
The story for our adventure started at the abandoned underground Downtown City subway station that conceals the entrance to the "high tech lair of the clueless yet courageous superhero Lone Wolf", the Wolf's Den, where we were treated to a proprietary video that had us chortling even as we scoured the space for clues. The number of clues we were allowed, as it turned out, was unlimited, and it was delivered on-screen after we pressed a button to request one. This was just one of the many immersive aspects of the room - we were in a subway station, where the lighting was ambient and just right for our old eyes. There were so many great parts to this experience: we were allowed to take photos the entire game - and we kicked ourselves more than once (haha!) because we were so distracted by the terrific music and the game challenges that we, photo freaks, completely forgot to take any!
The room is what we consider G-3 - everything was high-tech, as advertised, except for two regular locks, and the game followed a linear progression, just like the subway system, taking us back to our origin station when we realized we had to jump to another line, in a manner of speaking. The space was not big, but the number of puzzles, original and bespoke props (don't put anything in your pocket!), appropriate music and sound effects, and (had we remembered), the opportunity to pose for our own photographs made the game totally unforgettable. We were also very lucky to have Aspen as our game host: she was very attentive and gave us a choice of starting with an initial clue given. This initiative we really appreciated, as she was forthcoming with clues and took the time to note when it was a technical glitch (there were no real glitches) or when we were really close to the final solve for any one particular puzzle. There was no climbing or crawling involved - this was a keyboard warrior sort of challenge - and time and hint delivery show up in both rooms, so almost all the physical activity we did was bop to the very boppable music ...
Our adventure was a howling success: we rescued the Lone Wolf from the Captain in 51:59 and hardly used the sketch board that was provided. We fooled around quite a bit, have to admit - the Captain and the Lone Wolf are just that kind of character! This was a really family-friendly room, although for supervision purposes, children under 15 must be accompanied by an adult. If you like goofy superhero games and intelligent dad jokes, this is definitely the room for you. All the puzzles made perfect sense, and, based on this solid five-stars game, we cannot wait to try Exit 4's other rooms!