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13th Gate Escape is located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, far from the better known entertainment hubs of Los Angeles and New York City. I didn't know much about Baton Rouge except that LSU (Louisiana State University), Shaquille O'Neal's alma mater, was located here and that it was a 90 minute drive from New Orleans. The few people I knew that played at 13th Gate said it was the best escape room location in the country but then again, some people say the same for a lot of average rooms.
13th Gate started off with haunted houses and added escape rooms to their offering and as with many other similar businesses, their sets are the among the best out there. What creates greatness is combining this expertise with good enough puzzles, which is a problem with escapes rooms that spawned from the haunt industry. We encountered this issue during the same NOLA trip at another location that had amazing sets but non-logical puzzles.
This review will be for their two strongest games, "Cutthroat Cavern" and "Tomb Of Anubis", but all their games are of similar quality. Cutthroat was one of the first stops on the Room Escape Artist: Escape Immerse Explore tour in June of 2018. Although the tour only had three of the five rooms scheduled, our group of hard core entusiasts (some who trying to be enshrined in the Guiness Book of World Records for escape rooms) came back on our own to play the remaining two games. From their site:
Cutthroat Cavern
"While on a Caribbean vacation you decide to explore the island of Isla Mujeres, rumored to be the location where the notorious pirate Jean Lafitte hid his most priceless treasure.
Stopping to talk to a local tour guide, he gives you directions to a large series of Mayan Ruins and caves overlooking the ocean. He tells you that according to island legend, the pirate had a secret hideout somewhere within the caves, though no one had ever been able to discover it. The caves themselves were known as Cutthroat Caverns because the ancient Mayans would frequently perform human sacrifices within them...Can you Discover the hidden mysteries of Cutthroat Cavern before you become its next Sacrifice?
Tomb Of Anubis
"When you booked your vacation to see the great pyramids, you thought it would be more interesting. But as your tour guide drones on and on about different types of ancient pottery and myths, you decide you could have much more fun if you were exploring on your own...
After a bit of exploring you walk into a small dark room and SUDDENLY a stone door closes behind you! You realize, all too late, that you are trapped! You look around the room and to your horror you see the remains of other "explorers" and realize that you have walked right into an ancient Egyptian trap! Can you uncover the mysteries of the pyramid and escape before time runs out? Or will this tomb become your final resting place?