The Basement: Staffer visits newest escape room at The Basement KC

Unlike your average escape room, The Basement KC adds a live-action aspect to solving the breakout puzzle, featuring fully-makeuped performers with fake blood dripping down their faces who silently creep around and freak you out even from across the room. But to give you a little hint, the tall, blood-covered man pacing the room and wearing an ominous long overcoat is actually a key step in escaping — and won’t hurt you, I promise. 

Driving through Kansas City’s eerily quiet West Bottoms at the end of winter gives the look and feel of a ghost town in a 1980’s horror movie. So it’s no wonder this town-frozen-in-time is home to the top-rated horror-themed escape room in the country. Grab your medical face mask and make this your first stop as an exercise for your sleepy brain once released from quarantine.

The horror-themed escape rooms offered here — minus any ghosts, zombies, or vampires — immerse you into the role of a person trying to escape the clutches of the made-up psychopathic killer Edward R. Tandy. The fear factor really goes a long way in engaging you more in the situation you will have to escape — or face the wrath of the taxidermy-obsessed murderer.

The Basement KC has two escape rooms, both with the same psycho-killer chasing after you. If you manage to escape Edward Tandy then you can move on, only to wind up deeper in the twisted story in the second chapter, “The Study.”

While a 45 minute timer ticks faster and faster and your palms are drenched in sweat, you will have to solve puzzles, put yourself in the shoes of a potential victim and make quick decisions with your team in order to break out in time.

To take this horror challenge, one person in the group must be 18 or older while the rest sign consent for their doom — or for safety validations. They recommend getting there a few minutes early and making sure you have all the paperwork and such you need to play.

The newest addition to The Basement KC, “Chapter 2: The Study,” is the only other room available so far in what is eventually going to be a four-room series to complete before escaping. “The Study” assumes that you have somehow escaped the basement and moved on to the upstairs area of the house — only to be forced to hold in your screams and face the live actors once again if you want to escape. 

The same backstory is continued — you are locked in an area decorated as Edward’s personal study, set in the upper levels of the psycho killer’s family home.

During the pre-game introduction, it was explained that I had arrived at the study after running up to the second floor of the house instead of racing out the front door (like anyone with common sense would). But in hindsight, with my lack of directional awareness I would probably go to the second floor too on accident if ever faced with this scenario in real life.

The staff member joked that this choice seems to be the death-foreshadowing one that everyone makes in classic horror movies. But the comparison of the game to a thriller went deeper than that — the whole game felt like my Oscar winning debut of a fright-night horror film.

Even though he wasn’t with us during the whole game, the live performer added a whole new layer to the experience. My fight-or-flight mode was activated the moment he started grabbing my hand and whipping his gaze around the room with wild, terrified eyes. Luckily, I chose to fight — or at least calm myself down enough to stay and listen to what he had to say. 

If you’re worried that you’d be too scared to focus on the game or get caught up thinking about dying the whole time, just remember to be paying close attention to what the actor says — it may end up being useful in breaking out. 

Or you might end up making the same mistake I did in and accidentally releasing the actor into a bloody murder screaming-state, sending me flying to the direct opposite side of the room — only to realize, it was another step and clue to getting out.

Unlike some breakout rooms, you can’t just call out for a hint from the operators whenever you get confused. Even when we’d get stuck as minutes flew by and the performer slid by the walls of the room unbothered, they only gave assistance when spending too much time on a dead end or an actual game malfunction.

After five minutes of dangling half my body upside down through a small hole and searching for another clue even though we had already found one inside, the staff member chimed in and said there was nothing left there that we would need. So even without structured, convenient hints popping in every 10 minutes, they still helped me along the way when I got too off track.

While my friends and I didn’t end up breaking out and the live actor froze from across the room, looking like he was about to kill us right when the game ended, we were told that we had made it close to the end. Unfortunately, they didn’t reveal the rest of the steps to escape the room, leaving me curious, unsatisfied and wanting to go right back in again and finish it. 

No matter how much of a scaredy cat you think you are, this escape room is worth it. Just be careful not to become Edward Tandy’s next murder victim along the way.