A critical mass of puzzle material.
Location: New York, NY
Date Played: June 24, 2019
Team size: up to 12; we recommend 5-7
Duration: 60 minutes
Price: $31 per player
Ticketing: Public
Emergency Exit Rating: [A+] No Lock [A] Push To Exit
Physical Restraints: [A+] No Physical Restraints
REA Reaction
Nuclear Annihilation was a challenging puzzle-centric escape room with some nifty interactions. Escape Room Madness presented a traditional escape game, completely with old-school difficulty and low lighting.
The lighting became annoying, even though we had more than enough flashlights for the team.
While there were some strong narrative mechanics, they were few and far between.
If you struggle to see in low light or want a stronger sense of adventure, I cannot encourage you to play this game. However, if you’re attracted to escape rooms for the puzzles, and want to have a large amount of content to play through, this is a great option.
As far as old-school escape rooms go, this one appealed to me more than most.
Who is this for?
- Puzzle lovers
- Any experience level
- Players who don’t need to be a part of every puzzle
Why play?
- Volumes of puzzles
- Nifty switches as inputs
Story
A terrorist attack on the nuclear power plant where we worked had left us trapped. We had to handle the situation.
Setting
We entered a low-lit room with puzzle stations lined up around the periphery. Many of the stations had some lovely, tangible interactions with buttons, switches, and dials that were pleasantly tactile.
Flashlights in hand, we puzzled through the game.
Gameplay
Escape Room Madness’ Nuclear Annihilation was a standard escape room with a higher level of difficulty.
The difficulty came from the volume of puzzles within the space.
Core gameplay revolved around searching, observing, making connections, and puzzling.
Analysis
➕ Escape Room Madness built fun electronics into Nuclear Annihilation. The control panels with switches and lights looked and felt good. These fun inputs worked well in the gamespace.
➕ / ➖ The gameplay was gated with locks. The volume of locks gave everyone the opportunity to participate in opening up new game elements. While some of the puzzles and locks were correlated by clues, on other occasions, we’d derive a 4-digit combination and have to try it all over the room. There was almost no variation in digit structure among the locks, which was unfortunate.
➕ Time notifications came to us as news reports. These were well produced and worked well within the theme.
➖ The puzzling felt largely disconnected from the rest of the experience. While many of the puzzles were thematic, they didn’t convey narrative. Escape Room Madness relied on laminated pieces of paper as clues rather than building clue structure into the environment.
➕ Our favorite puzzles made use of clues and inputs other than laminated paper. Newer players were especially excited by one layered decode that relied on unfamiliar props.
➖ The gamespace was dark. While Escape Room Madness provided enough flashlights for each player to have their own, we were continually hampered by the flashlight-between-head-and-shoulder lighting technique, in order to use two hands on a lock. With all the locks we needed to see and manipulate, we would have been much more comfortable with a bit more light.
➖ We wasted a bit of time on puzzles we couldn’t solve yet. On multiple occasions, it seemed as if a puzzle was accessible, but we didn’t yet have all the necessary components. Additional gating would be helpful so that players don’t feel like they’ve wasted large amounts of time.
❓ We accidentally created a red herring in this room… and honestly, our imagined puzzle was pretty amazing. We needed a hint to move on past our concept because we were so sure of it. We were then dumbfounded when we learned that it wasn’t the intended puzzle because it worked so perfectly.
➕ Nuclear Annihilation was an old-school puzzle-driven escape room. There were a lot of puzzles to solve. For players who play escape rooms for the puzzles, there were a ton of puzzles that solved cleanly and moved the team forward.
Tips For Visiting
- Nuclear Annihilation is located on the 5th floor. Note that Escape Room Madness has other games on the 6th floor.
- Escape Room Madness is located in Koreatown. On this block, we recommend Mandoo Bar for dumplings and Spot Dessert Bar for crazy and incredible desserts.
- Take public transit; Escape Room Madness is half a block from many subway lines.
- As with all Midtown Manhattan escape rooms, if you’re driving a car, prepare to pay dearly for parking.
Book your hour with Escape Room Madness’ Nuclear Annihilation, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.
Disclosure: Escape Room Madness comped our tickets for this game.
