Chocopocalypse
Location: New York City
Date Played: June 19, 2018
Team size: 2-10; we recommend 3-4
Duration: 10 minutes of gameplay + post-game snacking & mingling
Price: Free for one day only (June 19, 2018)
Ticketing: Public
What’s Going On?
Snickers created a popup escape room with public relations firm Weber Shandwick to mark the launch of three new “intense flavors”:
- Fiery (pepper)
- Salty & Sweet (salt & caramel)
- Espresso (speaks for itself)
The Intense Flavors Hunger Bunker was a free 10-minute escape room themed around an unexplained apocalyptic scenario. Our crew of survivors had secured ourselves in a bunker that was well supplied with the new Snickers bars.
The Snickers Intense Flavors Hunger Bunker was open for 9 hours yesterday and will never return again. If you didn’t play it yesterday, you won’t be able to play it.
Structure
Upon arrival, I walked into a large warehouse that had a few tasting stations, the entrance to the game, and a big, well-lit post-game photo area. Decked out in white jump suits, the game staff looked like Oompa Loompas who were getting ready to “accidentally” shrink Mike TV. This was charming and affordable costuming.
Once the game began, we were led through three challenges by an actor in a video. Each puzzle took us through another aspect of survival in the bunker. Each puzzle included a search and puzzle component. (The searching was frequently finding the instructions.)
The mid-game challenge was a fairly straightforward group decision-making game where we had to use an Android tablet to make a series of choices about how to run our lives in the bunker. Each decision we made added some resources and burned others. We simply had to keep our resources above the critical level to survive.
REA Reaction
Intense Flavors Hunger Bunker was a solid 10 minutes of gameplay. The premise was simple, but effective. The puzzles weren’t mind-bending, but each had a distinctive challenge, and was rooted in the narrative. It didn’t drag, even though we were a large group. I would have loved it if the puzzles had required a little less rigid instruction delivery.
The Snickers Intense Flavors Hunger Bunker delivered a brief yet worthy experience. It wasn’t tuned for puzzlers; it was more for experience-oriented, Snickers-curious New Yorkers.
Finally, the post-game photo setup was fantastic. It was escape room-y with cute signs, great staging and even better lighting. Many permanent escape room facilities could learn from this. The post game photo is a promotional and Instagramable takeaway. If it looks great, then it functions as inexpensive marketing.
It was also a shame that this one wasn’t running a bit longer. The Snickers apocalypse was no joke… There really was no tomorrow.
