Escape room challenges like The Hex Room from Cross Roads Escape Games in Anaheim, CA are all the rage these days. They offer guests an intense, brain-stimulating experience while often in the guise of a horror film a la SAW or Hostel. The core concept is that your team must complete a set of challenges and solve puzzles in order to escape. The usual formula, however, has been to put the group together and let everyone work together to solve these challenges. The Hex Room has taken this formula and turned it on its head – this time, each of your group is in their own room and must worry about solo AND group puzzles.
Going further with the horror film metaphor, The Hex Room assigns an archetypal horror film role to each of the team’s six members: The nerd, the jock, the virgin, the detective, the prom queen, and the rebel. The starting point for each person is based on his or her assigned role – giving each player a unique experience. The beauty of this is that you could technically come back six different times, and have six different puzzles to solve (Editor’s Note: The Detective role is the most challenging in the game, be warned). Cross Roads Escape Games was created by the dynamic duo of Madison and Luke Rhoades, who have attended and/or worked a multitude of escape rooms and other haunted events over the years. Their goal was to create something that stands out from the crowd and, I am pleased to write, they have succeeded.
Upon checking in, we each filled out a brief questionnaire which Madison used to determine each of our roles. I was deemed “The Virgin” and got to sport a pink “Hello Kitty” style ribbon in my short hair. One-by-one, we were each walked into the game area and sat in a pitch black room. Instructed to wait until the lights come on, I tried to survey the environment, to no avail. Then, over a loud speaker, the killer/game master/psychopath who put us all into the game introduced us to the situation at-hand. I will not spoil and of the puzzles that we encountered, but can definitely say they are challenging and will test you – both individually and as a group.
The most important tip I can provide is that everyone must be able to communicate effectively as some people will have items or clues that other people need (as you are separated, this presents a challenge in and of itself). The Detective, as previously-mentioned, is the most challenging role in the experience, as it requires the most communication, as well as the ability to delegate and compartmentalize the situation to keep everything flowing smoothly.
Given one hour for the group to complete all the tasks and escape, we managed to get out with 40 seconds left on the clock! I am proud to say that we were the first group to actually escape during Cross Roads Escape Games’ press preview week (Editor’s Note: Smug-face, activated!).
Overall, Cross Roads Escape Games Hex Room is an entertaining, fun, and creepy escape room challenge that I highly recommend. Tickets are $32 a person and, remember, you must bring a group of six people. They will not add other people into your group that you don’t know.
Check out The Hex Room’s booking page for more information!
Address:
4245 E La Palma Ave
Anaheim, CA 92807
United States
(714) 572-1004
Info@CrossRoadsEscapeGames.com
www.CrossRoadsEscapeGames.com
