Unlocking the Joys of Austin’s Puzzle Rooms

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Maze Rooms Austin

Maze Rooms Austin (a franchise that came here from Russia by way of Los Angeles) currently offers one scenario: Enter the safe house of a Cold War-era Soviet spy, uncover evidence of espionage, and steal away with the identifying documents. (A second is set to open in late summer and a third some time later.) To book a room, you reserve a time slot and show up with two to six players, so there is no possibility of being thrown together with strangers. We arrived with a full complement of agents, listened to the briefing, and followed our host to the starting point.

As the door closed behind us, I was stunned by the realism of the setting. The interior design was incredibly faithful to the period, and for a moment I felt I'd accidentally stumbled into an actual Seventies kitchen. My nostalgia faded as our handpicked team of operatives made an efficient sweep of the scene, turning over and pulling apart anything that looked useful, arranging potential clues on the pale green Formica-and-chrome table, and stacking items that were of no use (or had been used) in an unobtrusive corner.

This escape room differs from others in that it has few straightforward locks that require keys or codes to open, except where they might normally be found, as on a briefcase or a safe dial. Many puzzles required us to manipulate or interact with objects in the environment, which opened something in another part of the room or revealed another room containing more threads to follow. Warning stickers marked some things as off-limits, but the room contained enough items to play with that we wound up chasing a couple of red herrings before returning to more fruitful avenues of intelligence-gathering.

We were told at the outset that each item would be used only once, so it was easy to follow the path laid out by the clues as they branched and rejoined each other. Although the puzzles were wide-ranging and challenging, our team made steady progress, and with the help of a few pointers given to us over the radio, we uncovered step after step of the Soviet agent's plot. (A team member with a hazy recollection of the Cyrillic alphabet may have given us a slight advantage at one point.) Eventually, through diligent code-breaking and puzzle-solving efforts, solid organization and teamwork, and a modicum of luck, we succeeded in unlocking the door, passports and incriminating documents in hand, cheering as we escaped with only a few minutes left on the clock. The free world was once again delivered from the shadow of Communism.