Mendoza, Jan 2024
Mendoza is near the Andes, so I guess this theme is a natural fit for the location: stranded by bad weather, you seek refuge in a lodge that turns out to have dark secrets. Escape Room Mendoza is part of Argentina’s largest escape room chain, with two venues in this city alone, but the choice of game was made easier by them having only two in English. They told us that if we were beginners they’d recommend their lab game; so we booked the other.
The room gave a good impression: simple but atmospheric wooden decor, energetic music, and a parallel game structure that gave lots of possible starting points. As explained in the briefing, there’s also a system where each time you compete a major section of the room you get a wooden block to fit into one of four sockets, and when you have all four the game ends; so that gave an effective sense of progress.
We struggled with a section in the later part of the game. That was due to some overthinking in our part combined with an ambiguity that could be easily removed, plus the host trying to hint us towards a different puzzle than the one we were stuck on. I thought there were some small ways in which the flow here could be polished and tightened a little, but nothing too egregious.
The game uses plenty of numbers locks, and several of the puzzles are maths-based; but those are balanced by various more physical ideas. If you’re an experienced escaper it’s unlikely to rock your world, but it was an enjoyable game; enough so that we came out and asked if they had availability for the other. 
