The Vanishing Act

Review

Game Description

“The Great Noximillian, world-renowned magician, is hiding more than just tricks up his sleeve. His past five assistants have mysteriously gone missing, each after their 13th performance with Noximillian. Now his latest assistant, Casey, has contacted you for help in uncovering the truth behind these disturbing disappearances.

On the night of Casey’s 13th show, you are tasked with investigating The Great Noximillian’s private dressing room while the magician is busy on stage.

You have 75 minutes to find what Noximillian has been hiding and solve the mystery before the show is over and Casey’s time is up!”

Personal Experience

It’s been a long time since I last got a chance to do an in-person escape room (2022’s disappointing The Dig) and even longer since I’ve been able to do one here in Seattle (2018’s now-retired [for obvious reasons] Biohazard). I won’t get into the variety of reasons why it’s been so long, but for the past five years or so I’ve known what the next local escape rooms I’d be taking on would be: The Vanishing Act and The Storyteller, both by Locurio Games. I’ve heard nothing but universal praise for both and have been eager to check them out. A recent visit by my escape room enthusiast friend Amanda (we did The Dig together) ended up perfectly timed to allow me to break my in-person escape room drought. We assembled a group and booked The Vanishing Act.

Located in the quirky, cool Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, the first puzzle of The Vanishing Act was to actually find Locurio Games. The maps app on my phone didn’t quite understand how to get us there, hidden as it is past some stairs in an alleyway. Fortunately, we all arrived in time and were able to kick off the game without issue. I’m pleased to say that The Vanishing Act lives up to the hype. It’s an excellent room and has held up very well considering it’s over ten years old at this point. We were given 75 minutes to finish the room and our group of seven was able to finish with over 15 minutes to spare.

Narrative

The game’s narrative and mission is laid out pretty well in the description above: the Magician’s Assistant needs us to help him avoid getting disappeared permanently. Lots of little details during the experience—for example, the waiting room before the game room being set up to feel like the backstage of a theater, the sounds of Noximillian’s on-stage performance coming through while we were playing, the way that the game master provided hints during the experience—all added up to some deep immersion.

At a certain point during the experience the game narrative shifts gears from the mundane to something a little more sinister and magical. Smartly, the gameplay changes along with it—the first half felt very much like a (now somewhat dated) Gen1 room, with plenty of physical locks for us to open, while the back half shifts into a Gen3 experience. It’s a really subtle and clever marriage of gameplay and narrative work and one that I really appreciated. It works well even now, more than a decade after the room debuted.

Puzzle Play

Despite their age, the puzzles in the game were well conceived and executed, with a few pretty good aha moments. The difficulty felt like a nice medium, neither too easy nor too difficult or esoteric. The puzzle flow was really well designed, with it always being clear which components were meant to go with which puzzles and what sort of answer we should be looking for. One of the puzzles involved distinguishing colors, but the colors used were bright and distinct even for me.

The only nit I could pick was that our group of seven felt slightly too large for the room. There were a few moments where we were idle waiting for other people in the group to finish a puzzle that we all couldn’t work on at the same time. With us split up, it felt like there were parts I missed out on. While the game recommended 6-8 people, I think it would have been slightly better with 4-5.

Recommendation

The Vanishing Act is one of the best escape rooms I’ve played through, with only the excellent rooms of C-U Adventures providing any real competition for narrative and puzzle quality. I highly recommend it if you’re in Seattle and am even more excited to play through The Storyteller soon.