We can do it!
Location: Cambridge (Boston), Massachusetts
Date Played: December 16, 2018
Team size: we recommend 2-8 depending on the experience you’re looking for
Duration: 2.5 hours
Price: $49-85 per ticket
Ticketing: Public event
REA Reaction
Club Drosselmeyer was a magnificent mirage. For a few hours, an idyllic night club filled with swing dancers, jazz musicians, histrionic characters, and challenging puzzles appeared out of the cold Boston air to host a distorted World War II rendition of The Nutcracker… and disappeared just as clock struck 11pm.
There is no event in the puzzle or immersive theatre world that I eagerly anticipate more than this annual confluence of puzzles, swing dancing, music, and theatrics. It’s all of the entertainment that I love wrapped up for Christmas and tied with a bow.
Each year it has been a little different and a bit improved, but still Club Drosselmeyer. This time around, it was noticeably harder to earn our win (there will be less one puzzle for the rest of the run). Old villains turned into allies and new foes emerged. Above all, they’d streamlined the flow of the experience.
Club Drosselmeyer was glorious because there were so many ways to savor it. For those of us who wished to devour everything it had to offer, the one drawback was the bittersweetness of realizing that just wasn’t possible. There’s something real and immersive about that as well.
As our time at Club Drosselmeyer concluded once again, one of our teammates (an avid escape room player) who was attending for the first time remarked, “I feel high…” That’s certainly how I felt.
Tickets for Club Drosselmeyer are nearly soldout. If you can get your hands on one for this Wednesday or Thursday night, I’d strongly urge you to do so immediately… otherwise you’ll have to wait until 1942.
Who is this for?
- Story seekers
- Puzzle lovers
- Scenery snobs
- Jazz fans
- Swing dancers
- Immersive theater fans
- People who are fine with crowds
- People who don’t need to be part of every interaction
- Any experience level … for puzzlers or dancers
Why play?
- Puzzle hunt-style puzzles
- Spectacle
- Dance, acrobatic, and magical performances
- An amazing jazz band
- Roleplaying
- 1941-themed party
Story
It was Christmas in 1941. We’d been attending Herr Drosselmeyer’s annual Christmas since 1939. With each passing year the threat of war loomed larger. With the sudden attack on Pearl Harbor, the war had finally found us. It was time for all Americans to put aside their differences and fight the good fight.
As in the previous years, we’d heard that Drosselmeyer Industries would reveal the latest work from Project Nutcracker: version Delta. We had a feeling that Herr Drosselmeyer was going to find himself in another pickle and need our help.
This year we were hunting for a mole.
Setting
We returned to the glamorous 1941 night club of Club Drosselmeyer. The bandstands were back along with their musicians. The dancers tore up the floor and the singers belted tunes. Everything felt the same, with a couple of improvements:
First, Herr Drosselmeyer had moved from his second floor perch overlooking the festivities to a large table at stage right. This remedied one of the bottlenecks of past years.
Second, the massive Army and Navy banners looked great. I found them catching my eye multiple times throughout the evening… which is saying something because there was a lot to see.
Gameplay
Each year Club Drosselmeyer’s creators put a new spin on their gameplay.
The core of the event remains the same: participants could puzzle, swing dance, drink, socialize, interact, or simply watch everything play out.
The shift in 1941 came from the overall structure of the puzzle game. This year there were three distinct paths to follow and an assortment of side quests. This shift maintained the overall feel of Club Drosselmeyer, while streamlining the flow of the gameplay.
Analysis
➕ The singing, dancing, music, and vibe of Club Drosselmeyer was as wonderful as it had ever been.
➕ The puzzles played well, resolved cleanly, and presented a challenging puzzle hunt-style game that made us earn whatever intel we received.
❓ This year’s puzzle game was considerably more challenging than those of previous years. The upcoming performances run will drop one of the more difficult puzzles to make the game more competitive. This is the right call, in my opinion.
➕ Club Drosselmeyer’s unique and wide-open “take in the experience however you wish” approach is a beautiful thing. There’s something for just about anyone.
➕/➖ The acting was greatly improved from the previous years. There were still moments that didn’t land quite right, but the hit/miss ratio was shifted significantly since last year.
➕ The new structure simplified the story and gameflow, and shrunk wait times for interactions to a more than acceptable minimum.
➕/➖ For your own good, I’m blurting out a vague spoiler here for anyone who has played in past years: Just as the structure was different, so was the alignment of one major character who I had no desire to work with due to his past behavior. I didn’t fully appreciate how significantly his character had changed until the end of the experience. Someone deserves a second third chance. I disliked the guy so much in past years that I couldn’t see his character development happening until hindsight had kicked in.
❓ In actor-driven games, we frequently feel conflicted between paying attention to a performer and solving puzzles. That struggle was more present this year because we had more to solve. As much as I love the challenge of Club Drosselmeyer, there’s a part of me that wishes that I could spend a little more time dancing and taking in the show while playing competitively.
➕ The expansion of side quests added an additional lower-stakes, lower-difficulty series of challenges.
➖ I couldn’t tell the difference between side quests and main quests until I was deep in the game.
➕ The introduction of the Boston Police Commissioner as a character was fantastic. He opened up a whole new gameplay thread for less-puzzley players who wanted to focus on actor interactions.
➕ I really enjoyed the concluding sequence. It felt right for the story and was well acted.
Tips For Visiting
- Parking: I encourage taking mass transit, taxi, or ride sharing.
- Food: There are ample food options in the neighborhood.
Grab one of the few remaining tickets to this week’s Club Drosselmeyer 1941, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.
