Since winter is not fucking around this year, it was time for some indoor activities other than going to a bar (nothing wrong with that,) or going to the movies, (who even does that anymore?) I had heard of escape rooms and decided to try one.
Escape rooms started as video games where you found clues to get out of a dungeon, and many had a fantasy vibe to them. Leave it to the Japanese to run with this as a concept and build actual rooms people can play at escaping from. Today in New York, escape rooms are a popular form of immersive entertainment.
In case you aren’t sure what ‘an escape room’ is, or you haven’t seen the Schitt’s Creek episode and escape room 2moview, an escape room is a place where you and your friends are locked in a room with a particular theme, and you have to use logic and problem solving skills to unlock the door and save the day within an allotted amount of time. Corporate types use them as “team building exercises” which sounds gross.
The concepts are usually something like an escaping from an underground bunker, or “you are in a nuclear reactor and have to stop The Bomb,” or solving a murder in a fancy lady’s sitting room.
We checked out Mission Escape Games on 37th Street.
We chose the Bush-era sounding, Operation: End of Days. I didn’t know quite what to expect. You don’t have to fight anybody or lift heavy shit or run around, but the adrenaline does get going as the clock ticks down the allotted hour. It was a little “mathy” – that’s a word I made up. Well, there’s no actual math, but you have to think analytically which might as well be math. There were also shapes. So, just a heads up.
Our “game master” (we all wish we could put that on our resume,) walked us through the rules. The game master then watches from the other room and if you don’t know what you are doing, he types hints on a screen.
By the way, he’s laughing at you. They’re all laughing at you.
We needed a lot of hints. We ran out of time. The world was not saved that day. It was pretty hard, and we had to adjust our way of thinking to puzzles and logic and being really observant about things like, “why is there a little octagon on this wrench thing?” and “I bet this hatch opens and there’s a screwy looking thing underneath it… we gotta look for the screwy looking thing.”
The set design is top notch — and there was a movie music soundtrack playing in the back ground that really added to the experience.
Next, I stopped into The Escape Game on Madison Ave. right near the library.
The Escape Game has locations around the country. I got a tour of some of the rooms. They have a lot of impressive, imaginative scenarios including this one called “The Playground” where you and your team have to get your report card before you can leave. Like most of them, this one is actually two rooms with one room finally opening up to another level of play about halfway through.
Speaking of two rooms – I am definitely going back and trying Prison Break where you begin the game split up in two different prison cells and have to talk through the wall at first. No denying the detail is impressive.
In one room that I was not allowed to go in, housed all the game masters who watch closely on monitors. (What if they’re in an escape game and they don’t know it?)
“We are very in tune with the people playing,” my guide told me. “You have to lock into what the people are doing so you can help them if they need help.”
They spend the whole time watching everything and listening to you. So no funny business.
I told her how we sucked at ours.
“The first time, most people don’t know what they’re doing. After a few you get the hang of how they work.”
Pro tip: go with more than two people. Many minds are needed for this kind of three-dimensional puzzle.
All escape rooms seem to average $45.00 per player for an hour of fun.
I asked our guide for some funny, juicy stories. She told me sometimes late at night a few groups have been out drinking and have no idea what they’re doing.
“Those people are always yelling for clues,” she laughed.
She told me one guy proposed there, and the last clue said, “Will you marry me?” (Let’s see her escape that one.)
I should also mention the paintball themed Beat the Bomb in Brooklyn where you and your team – having been given haz-mat style suits – have to defuse a ‘bomb’ before it explodes all over your dumb ass. The website says only ten percent of people beat it, but one gets the impression that the point is to fail and get that paint splattered photo op. I am planning on going there for the ‘laser maze room’ where you have to climb over lasers beamed across the room high-tech security style.
Here’s the website, but be prepared for ads all over your social media if you click it!
Good luck!
