UPDATE: The Resident Evil Escape Experience is going nationwide. Tickets are available now.

As part of a swirl of promotion around Resident Evil VII and the 20th anniversary of the Resident Evil franchise, Capcom and the good folks at the game-themed Iam8bit production company and art space in Los Angeles have come together to present a limited-run (and currently sold-out!) escape room called "The Resident Evil Escape Experience" in LA.

I was fortunate enough to attend a preview event of the escape room and associated art exhibition last night, and since I lived to tell the tale it's only appropriate to share some (spoiler-free) impressions.

45 minutes of fear

The basics of the Resident Evil escape room will be familiar to anyone who knows how escape rooms usually work. You and a group of either friends or strangers (our group was seven people, but the normal limit is going to be six) are locked in room that's packed with locked drawers, strange objects, scraps of paper, combination locks, and assorted other clues and red herrings. With a timer constantly counting down you're tasked with exploring the room, solving puzzles, and eventually unlocking a door that allows you to escape. If you can't make it in time, you fail.

Like many escape "rooms" this one is actually made up of a series of rooms, each appropriately themed like a location from the world of Resident Evil. You can expect to explore a dimly lit study and an abandoned lab as you make your way through the experience.

Much of the Resident Evil theming of the escape experience comes from the sounds playing throughout, which is full of zombie groans and tension-building music. There are other special effects I won't spoil that ramp up the sense of urgency even more, and you really feel like running out of time equals a grisly death in this escape room, unlike many others when the end of your time is just a disappointing game over.

The puzzles themselves aren't heavily themed or too different from what you will see in other escape rooms (expect lots of key rings and torn notes to assemble, that sort of thing), but there are a couple of great stand-outs, including one centering on a creepy statue head and another that involves an actual working VCR.

If you're worried about the room being too scary, consider yourself reassured. There's no overt gore and nobody jumping out of closets to startle you. The experience is much more focused on pulse-pounding tension than cheap jump scares or gross-outs.

You're chaperoned in the escape room by attendants in Umbrella Corp. lab coats, and the whole experience is presented as test from the corporation. These guides will nudge you in the right direction if you get stuck, and ours did a fantastic job with this considering our group successfully finished with only 15 seconds of our 45 minute time remaining on the clock.

That's what you want out of an escape room, in my experience: just enough hints to keep making progress so you can see everything the room has to offer without the answers just being handed to you.

The Art of Evil

Outside of the escape room, in the Iam8bit gallery itself, the walls are adorned with special art and prints celebrating the Resident Evil franchise, so it's worth a trip even if the escape experience is sold out. You can check out some of the pieces on the official store page (once the widespread internet outage currently ruining the world is resolved, we can assume).

At the preview event for the escape experience the gallery also had the original 1996 Resident Evil running on a classic PlayStation just a few steps from a PlayStation VR rig running the "Kitchen" demo for the upcoming Resident Evil VII. Seeing the two games side by side was a powerful testament to the staying power of the franchise, as well as a reminder how far games have come in the past twenty years.

For more information on everything Iam8bit visit their official site, and if you want to plead with them to add additional days or tickets to the escape room event, you can hit them up on Twitter.