Cville Escape Room cvilleescaperoom.com
For many of us, the winter doldrums make us particularly susceptible to adventure’s siren song. Answering the call often takes the form of vacations to warmer climes, but for those looking for something less typical (that might be easier on the budget than a full-blown vacation), solving an escape room may be the way to go. Keep reading for the tale of a harrowing adventure in the Dungeon of Fire.
What
Completing Cville Escape Room’s Dungeon of Fire.
Why
Because I’m a nerd who enjoys immersive experiences and solving puzzles.
How it went
Brains were wracked, puzzles solved, and secrets revealed!
Our adventuring party entered the Cville Escape Room by climbing the stairs from the building’s main entrance on the Downtown Mall. (There’s a wheelchair-accessible entrance for players, too.) After checking in, an enthusiastic staff member escorted us into a briefing room where we sealed our phones in a small briefcase while they explained how everything works. Our group had completed other rooms, so we got the short version. Essentials include that players may request unlimited hints, exits always remain open, etc.
A staff member led us down the hallway toward the Dungeon of Fire. It’s an Alice in Wonderland feeling to step through the doorway into another world. Inside, wall sconces flickered like torchlight. Blood-spattered shields lined the rough gray cave walls, and a skeleton laid on the floor just inside the door, next to the air purifier. The Cville Escape Room folks go hard with the theming, but they also care about the health and wellbeing of their players.
Once “sealed” inside, we started working on the clues. Rooms are designed with groups of puzzles that culminate in getting a piece of the overarching puzzle for the room—puzzle sets can be worked on separately in any order.
I love that escape rooms require folks to take nothing for granted. To be successful, players must look at every detail in the space as a potential clue. For example, mysterious marks on the framed dungeon map on the wall or words in the giant tome encased in a glass case might correlate to numbers or letters in the lock combination for a box that will reveal the next clue.
Each room comes equipped with tools to help players in their quest, like flashlights, magnifying glasses, and a Magna Doodle-esque tablet for notes. When desperate times call for desperate measures, there’s a phone available to ring the helpful staff members at the front desk. It’s an old-school push-button phone with a handset and spiral cord. Heck, it’s probably worth taking your kids there just so they finally get the expression “hang up the phone.”
Our five-person group worked pretty well together. We tended to break into smaller groups to noodle different puzzle sets and then switch out if one of us got stumped. Everyone’s brain works a bit differently, which makes collaborative problem-solving part of the fun. A funny moment was when I turned around to find two family members wearing hats they’d taken off the walls while searching for clues!
At the family-owned and -operated Cville Escape Room, unique offerings are updated every few years. I’ll head back soon to try the newest addition—a pirate-themed room titled Captain’s Challenge—that opened near the end of last year. For escape room enthusiasts (read: addicts), Cville Escape Room offers a chance to commemorate the experience with an ornate key hung on a ribbon that repeat offenders receive upon completion of their fourth unique escape room. Keys hang from their ribbons on the walls surrounding the front desk, and recipients can earn additional charms to add to their key ribbons as they complete additional rooms.
Photo by Eze Amos.
