The Entrapment

The best escape room in San Diego. Excellent set design and storyline. Progressively challenging puzzles and great use of technology. Challenging but not impossible. Better with a group of 3 – 5. A must-​do for escape room enthusiasts.

Holy smokes! This was sooooo much fun! Too much fun. Most fun my family and I have had in a long time. I don’t want to give away too much but I can’t recommend it enough. Work together or fail. Its a very unique experience once the game begins, sort of like a real life board game. My group was not able to escape the room within the time limit BUT still had a great time. Real life board game is the best I can describe it.

I highly recommend this game to veteran escape room players who had found other rooms too easy. When we went to this one, the room still has the distinction of being unbeaten. We only got ¾ way through the game before time ran out, but it was fun going through it.
PROs:
1. Good incorporation of technology
2. Good story, you can tell the owners are passionate about escape rooms, so am I. These guys got soul.
3. Location. Ok. Unlike other reviewers, I like the ultra sketchy location. Makes me get into the mindset of escaping. If that makes sense, as opposed to like a busy commercial shopping mall or something.
4. Many of the hard puzzles were hard, but still fair
CONs
1. This was a temporary thing, but their intercom hint system was down, so the owners were in the room with us just sitting there watching us do puzzles and hinting us. For me it killed 75% of the immersion. Hope they fix it soon.
2. Many of the puzzles required excessive precision. Due to the tech aspect of it.
3. Some of the puzzles were excessively tedious, in my opinion.
4. This game is still new as of now. I feel like I am a beta tester more than a player. But it has enormous potential. I bet a month from now everything will be much more polished.
This could be a con or a pro, but this game is hard. If I was one of those guys that beat other games with more than 30 minutes left, I would book this one right away, and try to claim the title of first to beat the game. I won’t be surprised if they dial back the difficulty some time soon tho. I am glad someone made such a challenging room. Some of you guys out there need one like this.

We had a unique experience here. We were the first to ever escape, and we did so as the final gongs were sounding on the clock! Sooooo exciting! The guys were very nice, and the whole experience was quite wonderful. It started out with some neat ambience-​creating experiences including a video that was very well done. So I have to give it 5 stars.
We’d done two escape rooms at the Paniq Room and one at the School of Hard Locks. This one was the best so far. Very tricky! The puzzles were clever and unique, many involving complex instructions and creative solutions. There was also extensive and innovative use of technology (though sometimes it seemed a *teensy* bit buggy). The whole experience held together very well, and had a rich and spooky atmosphere.
All in all, it seemed that this experience was lovingly crafted by some really talented people. Definitely worth it! :)

A group of six of us went and here were our thoughts
–This escape room had a clearly defined path where the group works together to solve (better than other escape rooms because sometimes you have no idea what other people are working on and how it impacts what you’re solving)
–Puzzles were well designed, incorporated technology
–In other escape rooms, the moderator was cleaning up while we were in there which distracted some of the players that did not initially solve that particular puzzle. In this escape room, the owner moderates the room but does not change the room at all during play. He will provide guidance if you ask or if you are completely off track. He will not provide it right away but gives your team time to work through it.
–Two of the puzzles were a little more difficult for us so we wasted some time on them, which resulted in us not finishing the room in an hour. Since we were so close and on the last puzzle, he let us finish the room. We finished in a minute or so after the allotted time.
–This escape room has only been open for about a month and he’s done great. He’s been refining the room as he gets feedback from teams, making the puzzles not too challenging or simple. I can’t wait for another room to open up by this owner so we can go again (he did mention that he had plans for a second room).

Had a great time with a few friends from work trying our hand at escaping from this room. The owner’s an old friend, so when he said he started one of these, I had to try it. I suggest 4 or more people in your group, as you’ll need several people to do «jobs» during the run.
The puzzles were fun and, while not excessively difficult, they weren’t easy by any means. According to the owner, no one has escaped the room in time yet, but people are getting close.
Like I said bring a few friends or, like we did, a few more and do 2 groups. You can see who got further and talk about that time you totally went crazy looking for the last *deleted, spoilers!*
Worth a trip, go try it, you may pick up a new hobby.

Had a thrilling time trying to escape. Good luck to the mere mortals! Bring your wits and some friends to get out of this one.

Very unique gameplay! I’ve done a few escape rooms here in SD (Puzzalarium and all the rooms at House of Hints), and this one has the most involved storyline. It is different in that the puzzles must be solved sequentially so the divide and conquer strategy doesn’t work quite as well here.
Pros:
— Awesome use of technology in the puzzles
— Great ambience created by props, lighting and background music
— Puzzles were fun to solve
— Difficulty level was perfect
Cons:
— The technology used may not have allowed for much room for error, so even with the right answer we had to repeat some things before it worked.
— Some glitches in machinery, but this is a really new establishment so I expect those to be smoothed out in the future
— Location is quite creepy at night, but that just adds to the atmosphere? :P
— Perhaps not enough variety in puzzle types… very heavy on word puzzles and riddles
We did not escape in time, but the owner let us continue until we finished since no one was after us. That was really nice of him to let us see how the whole puzzle unravels! Overall, this is a great new escape room that is unique from all the others in SD. I give it 4 and not 5 stars only due to the fact I wish there was more variety in clues and less emphasis on word puzzles/​riddles.

I will start with a disclosure that I’m friends with the owner and have been doing puzzle races with him for more than ten years now. However, I didn’t help plan or test The Entrapment. I was actually proud to be one of its first official customers.
I’ve done a few escape rooms and always felt that the puzzles were disconnected and lacking in innovation or just so random that they weren’t enjoyable… none of that applies to The Entrapment! This escape room consisted of a variety of incredibly clever puzzles (of just the right difficulty) woven together in a story that made the experience unique and challenging. I loved that that there was a theme and story for the whole experience. Each object in the room was relevant and purposeful and added ambience. This is unlike the other escape rooms I’ve done that seemed to be full of completely unrelated puzzles or random office supplies that were intended to be puzzles. The story helped make the puzzles solvable and kept you connected to what was going on. I LOVED all of it and I can’t wait until Scott creates another room to escape from! In the mean time, get your friends together and book a time now!!!

I’ve done plenty of Escape Rooms in San Diego (Escape Game SD, Escapism, Great Room Escape San Diego, House of Hints, PanIQ which is now closed), and also ones in Irvine, LA, San Jose, and Las Vegas. So I was excited to see a new local one. I signed up for notifications and got a discount promo code, and played on December 18^th as one of the first non beta-​tester groups!
(no spoilers in this review)
Pros:
— Their best strength is their puzzles. They use techniques I have never seen before. And some of them require teamwork too; so even if you were some genius, you couldn’t solo this room if you wanted to.
— This room has the best storytelling in San Diego. It’s a very engaging story.
— Room is designed for up to 6 people, which is much more engaging than a massive 12 person room.
— The game flows nicely. There have been poorly designed escape rooms where there is no flow, and you end up being stuck in circular loops. This room designs it’s puzzles nicely to prevent that.
— Puzzle difficulty is above average.
— Owner offered a walkthrough because we were 5 minutes away from escaping, so we didn’t have to pay for an entire session again for only 5 more minutes of content. I’m sure this was only a perk pertinent to our group, because we didn’t have a group waiting to go after us. If the room gets busy, expect
Cons:
— Location is small, so there’s no lobby area. It’s no big deal though. Just a bit creepy at night.
— Some puzzles are a bit fidgety, so even though you may have the right solution, you may be stuck repeating your solution a few times.
We were unable to escape, but this is likely the best room I’ve been to in San Diego!