Steal and Escape: Mysterious Stranger (San Diego, CA)

We saved America!

Steal and Escape's Mysterious Stranger was highly recommended by everybody as a "must do" room in San Diego. Located south of San Diego in National City, we made the trek to see what this room had to offer. The story was centered around breaking into some random dude's home in order to either save or end America as we know it.

The room had above average decor and there were a lot of things to solve. There were a few crafty puzzles that were quite fun and we appreciated them a lot. We also liked the heavy searching element of the game as that's exactly what we like to see in a escape room. The weird part about the room was that there were bottlenecks that made it hard to move about the space and we were constantly bumping into each other with four players in the game.

By using brute force, many puzzles were entirely bypassed, thus we revealed many things that were already solved. There were some finicky issues with at least two puzzles in which we knew what to do but could not get them to execute. The storyline was also a bit forced with audio clips playing that tried to move the story along but felt more like a distraction. At the end of the day, we had fun and recommend playing this room with 2-3 people while in San Diego.  

Pros: Good amount of puzzles, some really fun searching
Cons: Finicky execution of puzzles, tight for 4 or more people

• Set/room design: Above average 
• Technology/automation: Gen-1.5
• Difficulty: Difficult
• Price: $28/person
• Number of players: 3-6, private, you can play 2 but must buy 3 tickets (we recommend 2-3)
• Duration: 60 minutes
• Overall Rating: ★★★★

See their website here: https://stealandescape.com