Review: Escape From Planet X | Escape Room LA

Escape Room LA presents...

"ESCAPE FROM PLANET X"

(AUDIO LED ESCAPE GAME)

✧ Played In Jul 2020 • Team of 3 Players • Success! ✧

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► VENUE & GAME FACT SHEET ◄

🏢 COMPANY: Escape Room LA

💻 WEBSITE: Company | Live Streaming Games

🏘️ ADDRESS: 120 E 8th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90014 | Google Map

🗾 COUNTRY: United States

🕒 TIME ZONE: To Check Time Zone

🕹️ GAME: Escape From Planet X

🔊 TYPE: Audio Led Escape Game

💻 WEBSITE: Game Info | To Book This Game

⏲️ TIME DURATION: 60 Minutes 💬 DIFFICULTY: 5/10 (Official) | Easy (Mattster)

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 CAPACITY: 2-6 Players

🔐 GAME TYPE: Private

💰 PRICING: $16.50 (USD) Per Person

► SPECIFICATIONS: AUDIO LED ◄

🖥️ PLATFORM REQUIRED: Zoom (Video/Web Conferencing App)

🚶 LIVE ELEMENTS: Live Audio Narration, Media Shown Via Share Screen

🔎️ OTHER NOTES: Host's Face Not Shown

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► PREMISE & OBJECTIVES ◄

Official Premise (from Escape Room LA):

A vacation in outer space takes a wrong turn when your spaceship crash-lands on an uncharted alien planet. You discover that all of the crew have disappeared and the aliens are getting restless! In this fun, wacky adventure, it’s up to you to find a way to get the spaceship up and running and escape from Planet X before the aliens attack.

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► "GAME AT A GLANCE" SUMMARY ◄

📚 NARRATIVE: Crashed into Planet X with adorable but predatory aliens, time to leave!

👀 VISUAL: Leans heavily on kids friendly and "too kawaii for words" graphics

🧩 PUZZLE: Designed for children, don't expect any real challenge for adults or experts

🧠 IMMERSION: Light, would improve if more audience interaction incorporated

🎮 REMOTE INTERFACE: Zoom app based, audio led puzzle adventure with still images

💁‍♂️ STAFF: Professional but very by the book, would prefer a more personable approach

💭 OVERALL: Enjoyable though honestly not for grown ups, unless tweaked or modified

🎟️ BEST FIT FOR: Children up until high school age, family game nights

🎫 IDEAL TEAM SIZE: Adults playing for giggles, then 1-2; otherwise, up to 4 max

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1 of 3 live streaming options

Last week, I covered "The Curse Of The Dark Raven" live streaming, audio led escape game from Escape Room LA, and saved a village from the ill fate of forever living in pitch blackness.

Today, my team experienced "Escape From Planet X", also an audio escape room, chronicling our fight for survival, and the return from the title planet to a more habitable environment, far away from green aliens. To be more specific, much like Chihuahua, cute but hostile critters.

You guys are so cuteee (but deadly)! Yes you are, yes you are!

For those who are not familiar with the concept of an audio led game, it's quite simple:

No live video feed will be broadcast during your Zoom session. The game host will use the screen share function, and present scenarios and puzzles through the usage of still images and vocal narration. Think of it as a fun, PowerPoint interactive lecture that will not proceed until you successfully solve the many intermittent puzzles.

ONE WORD SUMMARY: CUTESY!

This one struck me immediately as the obvious token choice for family and younger kids. The power of cute graphics command and control young minds! Incidentally, I am also susceptible to this phenomenon, so here we are, playing this "kids" game. So cute!!!

On a more serious note, I was actually quite satisfied with the art style and the designer's commitment to carry the same trend more or less all the way through. Whereas "Raven" occasionally fluctuated from obvious fairy tale book inspired graphics to maybe less impressive images, "Planet X" was consistent, rendering the whole package much more cohesive visually.

wacky premise

As an adult player, I cracked up at the notion that the entire space aircraft crew would just abandon me and my teammates for dead. First off, HOW DARE THEY? Second, hello, morals?!

As a kid at heart, however, I said, WHO CARES! Let's just go with it, fix the spaceship by completing puzzles, and pilot it back home without proper training or galaxy issued flying license... Actually, Hmm.

It is at this point that I realize no option can end well.

Make no mistake, he's here window shopping for dinner

puzzles in space

When it came to the puzzles in this interplanetary adventure though, I actually have much to share. First of all, though rated 5/10 officially, this is 100% a game geared towards kids. Therefore the difficulty should be adjusted, according to scale, via my patented formula:

Say, if this was a 5 rating for 12 year old, and I am now thirty-*ahem*, older, let's go with older... Assuming an inverse relationship... carry the 5 over... factorials and exponents and decimals... Algebra tells me it's roughly a 1.5/10. Whew. Math is useful.

So yes, as grown up expert players, we didn't think this was the ideal mental challenge; we blasted off in our newly repaired rockets after a short 27 minutes, after all. I would've preferred roughly 5 to 6 more riddles inserted for best perceived value.

However, if you have kids, younger relatives, and are hosting a family night for the target core audience, I can declare with conviction that this is a respectable option to consider.

Puzzles generally fell under the categories of counting, color and pattern recognition, and as one may logically expect, alien foreign language play. Yaj'a'?

It's fundamental, nothing too out of this world (ironically), but all appropriate for the its theme, demographics, and general entertainment purpose. Overall, "Planet X" is well done for what it's set out to achieve.

No longer an uncharted planet, the scientific community now refers Planet X as the Swiss Cheese Terror

MOMENTS AND HIGHLIGHTS

🛸 The shape of the space ship. What do you see?

👾 One puzzle actually had us temporarily stumped, albeit ever so briefly. An overeager game host blurted out a little nudge before we could try it all on our own. Judging how we had plenty of time left, we wouldn't mind having to struggle a tad more--it's part of the fun.

🛸 As a science degree holder, upon seeing a certain color puzzle, I unintentionally gave an impromptu mini lecture on how smaller wavelength corresponds to higher energy, and also its resulting in the violet end of the rainbow spectrum. I nerd-ed out in a kids game! Thanks, "Planet X", for keeping certain scene(s) scientifically accurate!

"Escape From Planet X" also promotes a healthy and balanced diet

👾 Believe it or not, one particular puzzle actually "required" outside knowledge! However, the solution can be easily deduced, even by brute force, but those with prior knowledge on the topic would potentially benefit from the injected humor a bit more so than others.

🛸 Speaking of humor, we were actually trying to jest around and have some fun with our puzzle solving since it was too easy for us. However, our game master was more of the strictly here to moderate type, and did not roll with our punches. It kinda killed the buzz. Reasonable flexibility and deviation from the script can add on to our experience!

👾 Finally, one crucial plot point and its associated mini game emphasized inter-players interaction, and potentially the one single best moment in our entire game. I saw that this approach was later more heavily utilized in more recent title "Raven", so I would firmly request more of these elements to be added to other currently available and future offerings.

How else are we gonna get embarrassing in game photo like this one?

That's a chicken dance... right?

And I think that about does it!

Where shall we explore next--how about the Mayan Jungle? As soon as I figure out how to back my spacecraft into the parking space, we'll switch on up to my Indy Jones Jeep!

Signing off,

Escape Mattster

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► DISCLAIMERS ◄

We at "Escape Mattster" appreciate this company's hospitality and the opportunity to publish an honest review. Though game access was complimentary, we aim to provide *only* genuine & unbiased opinions.

All official media are provided by or credited to respective contents owners, and are used with proper permission for the purpose of this post.

► RELATED RESOURCES ◄

⤻ THE LOST PYRAMID (AUDIO LED) - Escape Room LA | Review

⤻ THE CURSE OF THE DARK RAVEN (AUDIO LED) - Escape Room LA | Review