What Is An Escape Room Experience?

The wind howls outside the stoic and dilapidated estate, shutters slamming ceaselessly against rotted siding. Standing over his most recent victim, a scraggly man in torn clothing dips his cracked fingertips into the pool of blood seeping between the floorboards. As if in a trance, he begins to scrawl a message on the wall. Weeks later, the stench of decay sends officers to the scene. Shaky flashlight beams illuminate a question written in smeared gore: 

“What Is An Escape Room Experience?”

If you’ve never been to an escape room before, or if you’re about to embark of your first escape room adventure, and you’ve found this post: Congratulations! You are mere clicks away from having a reservation at the highest rated horror escape room out there!

You are definitely in the right place to learn everything there is to know about quality escape rooms. The rules, the exciting idea before the story, everything.

See Related: What is an Escape Room Like?

OKAY, SO WHAT IS IT?

Escape rooms are interactive, puzzle-solving escape game experiences where guests, friends, and colleagues are dropped into a themed room and can expect to play fun team games for roughly an hour.

The point of the escape game adventure is to complete a series of objectives through team building exercises before the one hour timer goes off in the escape rooms. At The Basement, your goal is to SURVIVE! Solve your way out, look for any potential clue, or die trying. 

Escape games vs. escape game experiences

What sets an escape room apart from an escape room experience? The biggest distinction is scope, scale, basic understanding, or quality of the rooms and game. A “Wow Factor” elevates any ol’ light hearted escape room game into something totally memorable and fun for your team to play.

At The Basement, we pride ourselves on the individual experience elements that begin as soon as the timer starts and for as long as the time runs. Puzzles aren’t just puzzles here. They’re a means of survival.

Elements of our escape room games

IMMERSION 

From the moment you enter, you can expect us to foster the tone of you and your friends’ experience. And not all escape rooms and escape room games do that. Dark hallways, eerie music, flickering lights, and a skittish escape room company work in tandem to put you at ill-ease.

As the door gets locked behind you, the clock starts ticking and it’s time to uncover clues in Edward Tandy’s domain. The outside world melts away and is replaced by the rooms of a cannibalistic serial killer.

HIGH STAKES

You are locked outside in The Courtyard, or trapped in the confines of The Study, stranded at the bottom of the perilous Elevator Shaft, or caged in his dreaded Basement. Either way, you’re experiencing storytelling on a whole new level.

Our incredibly immersive room and sets transport you someplace entirely new. Terrifyingly, this new world is populated with hidden clues, problem-solving, and more.

LIVE ACTORS

You will no doubt meet our live team of actors in the escape rooms. These characters live in the world of Edward Tandy and the dangers you face.

They pull you down the rabbit hole, bringing life to the story you’ve entered. But not to worry. They won’t drag you down with them… completely.

CHALLENGE

I have never been kidnapped by a real serial killer. It’s easy to imagine that escaping their clutches wouldn’t be as easy as it is to solve challenging puzzles in escape rooms though. You wouldn’t be able to ask the killer how to escape the room.

You wouldn’t be able to stop halfway through to take a quick phone call. At The Basement, we ensure that your experience is as realistic as possible, without any real harm coming to you.

Our games are really challenging. It’s not uncommon for our guests to die horribly rather than escape. (Unfortunately, we are on a nearly constant blood-mopping schedule.) 

Escape Rates: 

The Basement: 12%

The Elevator Shaft: 30%

The Study: 20%

The Courtyard: 25% 

However, there’s very little satisfaction without the opportunity for successful escape! Our escape rooms’ games pose a super fun challenge to those with inquiring minds and a competitive spirit ready to have fun and play.

There’s nothing quite like the rush of figuring out a puzzle, game, or room, all the pieces clicking together in your team brain.

STORY

Arguably the strongest differentiating factor between an escape room and an experience is the player’s involvement in the story. When you watch a movie, you are a passive observer, almost like when you enter virtual escape rooms.

Even when you enter online escape rooms filled with locks and keys, themed without substance, you simply are adjacent to the story. But when you are truly added to the game narrative, given context and value from your room environment, and are asked to find clues and solve puzzles with the ability to make decisions that impact your experience, you become part of the story.

It’s happening to you, it’s happening because of you.

AND YOU

The way our guests are emotionally impacted, mentally stimulated, and motivated in the rooms to escape goes way beyond just “solving puzzles.” Okay, okay.

Maybe I’m a bit of a sucker for immersive game storytelling, but even if our guests don’t actively notice this is happening, they can feel the difference in our real life adventure. They can tell they are partaking in a game design room like no other.

Bonus: How Much is an Escape Room?

WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

Now more than ever, guests have a ton of choices for where they get their entertainment kicks. We want every penny for friends or work teams to be worth it.

Approximately 3.94oz of filtered human blood is worth the cost of one ticket to The Basement: A Live Escape Room Experience! Although we’d love to have you pay in blood, unfortunately we just don’t have the fridge space. Still good to keep in mind though, right?

We want to be the best for YOU. You’ve shown us time and again your appreciation for what we do. We’re usually a pretty modest bunch and you have a way of making us blush.

The Basement’s LA location has over 1,200 5-Star reviews on Yelp. The feedback and excitement from our guests is truly what makes it all worthwhile.

Not to be too sappy, but with every scream, shriek, laugh, and triumphant yell, we see the worth of what we do. “It’s just an escape room.” That’s where you’re wrong! It’s an experience! 

ENTER IF YOU DARE

Take a step away from reality and into the world of Edward Tandy. You’ve heard the term, “willing suspension of disbelief?” Here, guests experience an UNwilling suspension of disbelief.

You can’t help but believe. You can touch it, you can smell it. It’s really happening. Book your experience now.

Keep Reading: Crowning the Champions of The Study

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The Basement is a horror escape room in Los Angeles, CA. Specializing in unique and thrilling heavily-themed puzzle solving adventures, The Basement offers guests the chance to escape a locked room inside the story of Edward Tandy with the goal of discovering clues and unraveling secrets to solve their way to safety. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for more details and stories on how to survive a scary escape room and win big.