Room Escape Artist

Molly’s Game is one of the best escape rooms near Amsterdam, Netherlands. Here are our recommendations for other great escape rooms around Amsterdam.

A must play

Location: Voorburg, Netherlands

Date Played: July 10, 2023

Team Size: 2-5; we recommend 3-4

Duration: 90 minutes

Price: 179 € per team

Ticketing: Private

Accessibility Consideration: All players must climb and crawl

Emergency Exit Rating: [A] Push To Exit

Physical Restraints: [A+] No Physical Restraints

REA Reaction

Down the Hatch’s Molly’s Game is a ground-breaking puzzle-driven immersive narrative experience that demonstrates the incredible potential of escape rooms as a more mature storytelling medium.

I emerged from the game with full-body chills, on the verge of tears, struggling to fully process what I’d just experienced and its tremendous implications for escape rooms on the whole. Of the many hundreds of escape rooms I’ve played to date, I can count on one hand the number that have evoked strong, complex emotions with such thoughtfulness and clarity.

Molly’s Game checked all the boxes for a top-tier escape room: a sprawling, detailed set; memorable interactions and magical special effects; lighting and sound design cinematically scoring every moment; and no shortage of satisfying, creative puzzles. And yet what truly elevated the experience was the narrative depth and cohesion that tied it all together. Each carefully cultivated emotion and each shocking revelation built into the next. Not a single element was extraneous.

Did Molly’s Game tell my all-time favorite story? Honestly, no. But did it tell its story effectively? Resoundingly yes, with a nearly unprecedented level of passion, conviction, and sophistication.

There’s a fine line between sufficiently praising and unfairly overhyping world-class experiences. Any given game will land differently for different players, different teams, and different playthroughs. So is Molly’s Game the top escape room in the world? To me, the only reasonable answer to such a question is with an optimistic prediction: I believe that Molly’s Game will fundamentally influence and inspire countless “best in the world” escape rooms in the years to come, providing them with new tools to more effectively tell diverse and varied stories.

For escape room players who care about narrative, Molly’s Game is worth traveling from any distance to play. The Netherlands and Belgium are astonishingly rich with dark, sumptuous, narrative-centric escape rooms, and Molly’s Game is unequivocally one of the region’s crown jewels.

When you visit, I recommend moving through this experience with maximal intention and openness. Don’t rush. Don’t treat the puzzles as “just” puzzles. Read everything. Unlike in the majority of escape rooms, every interaction, every detail, and every mind-blowing effect in Molly’s Game has a clear “why” — even if not immediately obvious in the moment — and ultimately, the game’s narrative is its principal puzzle.

Who is this for?

• Story seekers
• Adventure seekers
• Scenery snobs
• Puzzle lovers
• Players who are ok with dark subject matter
• Best for players with at least some experience

Why play?

• Brilliant narrative-driven puzzles
• A sprawling, gorgeous set
• Mind-blowing effects
• To experience the future of escape room storytelling

Story

Dr. Dan Kowalski returned to his practice to discover it had been turned into a peculiar game by “Molly.”

Setting

Molly’s Game began outside an old two-story house: the medical practice of Dr. Kowalski. Inside, the waiting room, office, and beyond were realistically rendered with an impressive level of detail, yet all cast under a moody haze that made it feel, perhaps, like a dream or a distant memory.

Gameplay

Down the Hatch’s Molly’s Game was a narrative-centric escape room with a moderate level of difficulty.

Core gameplay revolved around solving puzzles and making connections.

Analysis

➕ Molly’s Game had layers of narrative depth presented as a puzzle for players to progressively piece together. Certain redundancies made it so that the core story would be hard to miss, while some subtler connections rewarded players who were paying closer attention. Like in more mature genres of storytelling, this narrative left room for personal interpretation. The more you put in, the more you got out.

❓/➖ Our team played Molly’s Game the “correct” way; that is, we took our time, read everything as a group, discussed the story as we went along, and made most of the observations and connections that the game expected us to make in real time, even when not strictly required by the gameplay to progress. However, this implies that there are also “wrong” ways to play. When a game is as opinionated as this one about how it should be played, there’s opportunity for the gameplay itself to further dictate play style. And if you are a player who cares exclusively about puzzles or adventure over narrative, you may miss one of the primary reasons why Molly’s Game is such a standout.

❓/➖ Shortly after the game concluded, back in the lobby, we were lightly “quizzed” by our gamemaster on various details of the story — the final puzzle of sorts — which ensured that we’d observed everything we should have and also helped to fill in some of the harder-to-notice bits. I personally found the narrative of Molly’s Game to be remarkably cohesive, internally consistent, and self-standing; however, the need to append this sort of debrief indicates that there’s yet further room for improvement in letting the story speak for itself for every player, including players who are conditioned to experiencing traditional escape rooms a certain way. Because Molly’s Game landed exactly as intended for me, the post-game debrief was a wonderful way to process our experience. But for players for whom Molly’s Game lands differently, this sort of quizzing may leave a bad taste, feel somewhat demeaning, or, even worse, make players feel like they played the game wrong by correcting their perceived version of the story.

➕ The set design of Molly’s Game brilliantly pulled us into a vivid world with stellar environmental storytelling. Every detail was perfect, and the scale and build quality were staggering. With a grim moodiness that called me to explore every dark corner, I was often reminded of Sleep No More‘s core visual aesthetic and disorienting navigation (and re-navigation) of space.

➕ The opening scene of Molly’s Game established the premise and stakes, invited us into the magic circle, and taught us how lighting, sound, and motion would provide clear signposting and feedback throughout the game.

➕ The puzzles in Molly’s Game were generally simple yet highly effective in directly communicating narrative. They did this by focusing our attention and guiding our actions in ways that forced us to meaningfully confront, absorb, and embody story details. That’s to say, the puzzles cleverly choreographed our behaviors from start to finish, unlocking motions that felt like memories.

➕ A massive revolution blew our minds, and the narrative weight of our actions was genius. I still tear up thinking of this moment.

➖ Some paper props didn’t match the production quality of literally every other element in the game. Though there was a strong justification to present part of the story through writing, there was also an opportunity to make the act of reading more cinematic.

➕/➖ A layered sensory puzzle broke one of the cardinal rules of escape room design responsibly, demonstrating that you have to know the rules to break them — and you have to have a pretty darn good reason for doing so. Significantly longer and more complex than any other puzzle in the game, this was the main moment of Molly’s Game where I felt like “oh, we’re solving a puzzle now.” Yet ultimately, this puzzle did not overstay its welcome and the payoff was well worth it.

➕ A miraculous transition made us question our memories and warped our perception of reality, all while steeped in personally significant narrative context. Wowza.

➕ The game’s audio narration was phenomenal, going a long way in establishing a strong presence for a character without her being physically present.

➕/❓ The finale was ceremonious and consequential. A simple yet meaningful puzzle was exponentially enhanced by the physical heft of its constituent parts. Some of my teammates found that the music accompanying this scene detracted from the narrative tone, but your mileage may vary.

➖ Molly’s Game alluded to Stranger Things in its title font, but this was definitively not a Stranger Things-themed game in any way. While there were some subtle justifications for this connection, I felt the outside reference mildly undermined the original story that Down the Hatch had worked so hard to develop.

Tips For Visiting

• Molly’s Game was more spooky than scary, and included moments of darkness. It also featured a number of dark themes that may be triggering to some players:

• There’s a lot to appreciate in the game design of Molly’s Game even if you disagree with some of its more divisive and provocative themes. After all, not every escape room — or book, movie, TV show, etc. — is for every person, nor should it be. If you find yourself not vibing with the story, I encourage you to try to shift your focus to how it is being told.
• There is a small parking lot and street parking. Down the Hatch is also an easy 5 minute walk from the nearest train station.

Book your session with Down the Hatch’s Molly’s Game, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.