About: You’re in a Roaring Twenties speakeasy and the cops are banging on the front door. Do you have what it takes to find the secret back exit and escape the long arm of the law?
Full review: This room relies heavily on five number or letter combination locks, which became exhausting. The set of the room was probably our favorite part of the experience, as the music and walls really set the tone. There is a variety of different classic escape room components, such as multiple rooms, finding hidden items, and solving different tasks such as a puzzle, decoder, and searching on pictures for clues.
About: In the outer reaches of the galaxy, can you and your fellow space travelers escape from a life threatening force?
TLDR: Everything in this room is written in Russian. You are given a cell phone with translation apps and when pointed at words and symbols around the room, you can either read everything in English or hear sounds relating to the symbols. At times the apps were frustrating to work with. You don’t do much searching around the room, as everything is pretty much out in the open. There are four main puzzles to solve which range from intermediate to difficult, which made escaping difficult for two people. This one was a challenge but it was mostly frustrating rather than rewarding, due to the unique high tech involved.
Full review: Upon entering this room, you can pretty much tell that you’ll be in the one room the entire time, meaning everything you need is just about visible. You are handed cell phones that contain two apps on them that you definitely need to complete the game. One app is used to translate Russian words to English by scanning (if you know Russian, you’re in luck!), while the other app involves scanning images around the room, which triggers a sounds and clues on the app. Overall, the apps were frustrating, as sometimes words wouldn’t appear properly.
There are four main puzzles in the room, each having nothing to do with one another, so if you like breaking up into groups to solve separate puzzles but not really working together, this room is for you.
Once the four puzzles are solved, you are given blocks that were hiding under each puzzle, and you must put them together to create something that will help you escape. I won’t go into much more detail than that.
Overall, the room was OK. I appreciated it trying to be unique by using translation apps, but it just wasn’t the most ideal experience for an escape room.
About: Manhattan is under siege and chaos abounds! Can you rescue the city within 60 minutes? The Big Apple is counting on you.
TLDR: This room is easy and can be done with two people even though four is recommended. There are eight easy mini puzzles to solve, which leads to the final two tasks. There is only one room in this game and it is not immersive. There is nothing hidden or any secrets to uncover. Everything is already out in the open for you. Overall, the experience was pretty bleak but is recommended if you like completing multiple small puzzles that bring everything together.
Full review: The two of us arrived at Escape Entertainment as walk-ins and were strongly discouraged from playing the game, as it is recommended there are at least four players. We decided to play anyway because we like a good challenge, even though they were trying to convince us it would be impossible to escape.
Walking into the room, it was easy to notice that there were no other secret rooms in the experience, which is usually a let down for us and takes away the magic of escape rooms in general.
10 minutes into the game, I was surprised by how easy the room was, based on what we were told by the employee. With seven easy mini puzzles around the room to complete, which together gives you answers to the second to last activity of the room, we were breezing through.
With 25 minutes left, we entered the final phase of the room, which was putting together four puzzles with blocks. It was actually pretty difficult to figure out what the puzzles were trying to form, and ultimately we weren’t able to get out in time, as we could only figure out 2/4 of the puzzles.
We were proud we were almost out of the room despite the odds we thought we were going against, but we believe this room is much easier than Escape Entertainment is making it out to be.
Even though the room fits 10 people, 10 people is way too many and most people will be standing around bored. We recommend 2-5 people for this one.
Overall, we weren’t too impressed with the set up of the room or the puzzles.
Escape Room City: New York 