Pure Ambition
Location: Los Angeles, California
Date Played: May 5, 2024
Team size: 4-10; we recommend 5-7
Duration: 90 minutes
Price: $95 per player
Ticketing: Private
Accessibility Consideration: There are flashing lights. The Ladder is accessible for most chair users, but other teammates will need to do some of the game elements.
Emergency Exit Rating: [A+] No Lock
Physical Restraints: [A+] No Physical Restraints
2024 Golden Lock Award Winner
"The Ladder is overwhelming ambitious, seriously replayable, and deeply enjoyable. Hatch Escapes took a lot of risks in style and gameplay, asking players to accept a slew of new and exciting ideas."
REA Reaction
The Ladder is an exploration of ambition expressed through its narrative, gameplay, and its very existence.
Under construction for more than 5 years and brimming with new ideas, Hatch Escapes took one of the biggest swings that we have seen in the escape room world. The Ladder isn't massive in size (although it isn't small)... it's bigger on the inside. I'm struggling to think of a more complex escape game.
Hatch Escapes has asked a lot of us players. The Ladder wants us to follow a nuanced story spanning decades, while solving an assortment of challenging puzzles, tackling an additional layer of puzzles to make money, and on top of all of that is a system of character life choices that tweak the rules of the game for each team. It's a lot, and we loved it.
Perhaps the biggest question about The Ladder is, "how replayable is it?" I cannot tell you exactly how many times we will ultimately replay it, but I can say this: As soon as we finished the game, we grabbed lunch, and then eagerly replayed it. And we want to play again.
There are strong video game vibes in The Ladder, structurally pulling from games like Outer Wilds, and using complex decision trees to control the outcomes of our many decisions, successes, and failures. I don't know how many different outcomes exist in The Ladder, but it's more than I will ever see, no matter how many times I replay it. Many of those outcomes may just be nuance and minutia, but it's there, represented for each team nonetheless.
And that brings me to the biggest challenge of The Ladder: you will not play it perfectly the first time... and you almost certainly won't on your second time either. It's a hard game that asks you to be cool with it. The Ladder demands that you tell your inner completionist to grow up. It's a massive departure from tradition in an escape room world where nearly every game is 100% completable by a sufficiently talented team. Personally, I find this kind of thing enticing. That initial sting of falling short was a bit shocking... but also exciting and new. Your experience may vary.
The Ladder was astoundingly ambitious and worth the wait. It's hard to comprehend the depth of The Ladder until you've climbed. This game is worth traveling for... and you should play it while visiting RECON LA 24.
Who is this for?
- Story seekers
- Puzzle lovers
- Scenery snobs
- Best for players with at least some experience
- Players who don't need to be a part of every puzzle
- Corporate climbers
Why play?
- Magnificent interaction design
- Numerous challenging and interesting puzzles
- The finest video production we've seen in the escape room world
- The details
- Novelty
- To play again and again
Story
It was our first day at Nutricorp, an Omaha-based vitamin company. The Ladder would take us through a 50 year career at the company, where our skills and our choices determined our story and outcome.
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