Room Escape Artist

Update 5/6/2025: If you enjoyed this article, we hope you’ll check out our interview with Great Gotham Challenge creators Jon Seale and Ryan Patch on Season 9, Episode 4 of The Reality Escape Pod.

GGC MMXXIV is a puzzle hunt through the streets of Manhattan created by Great Gotham Challenge.

Format

Style of Play:

• Puzzle hunt

Who is it For?

• Adventure seekers
• Puzzle lovers
• Best for players with at least some experience

Required Equipment: Mobile device

Recommended Team Size: 3-4

Play Time: 3.5-5 hours

Price: Early bird $160 per team of 1-4, full price $200 per team of 1-4.

Booking: This event runs annually in the summer. Sign ups are available in the spring on the GGC website. Join their mailing list be informed of upcoming events.

Description

This is a puzzle hunt in a section of Manhattan. Teams are given game materials and an initial puzzle at the starting location. They need a mobile device to enter each puzzle answer into the website to receive information about the next location they need to get to, or clues to the next puzzle. Eventually, they are told where to find the finish line.

Andrew Reynolds’ Reaction

Somehow, in all my years of puzzling in the greater New York City area, this was the first time that I was able to participate in the Great Gotham Challenge. The shortest review I can give is this: I definitely plan on attending again next year.

Puzzles aside, this was a well-organized game with a lot of thought put into it. We were given clear instructions at the beginning, including the geographical limits of the game. Our meandering path through the area was split between enough puzzles that I was almost in disbelief of how far we had wandered away from our starting location. And the timing of the two puzzles that provided some light refreshment was perfect!

The puzzles themselves were generally tough but fair and consisted of multiple layers. I found the first challenge to have too many layers, providing more of a challenge than I like to see out of an introductory puzzle. On the positive side, it did allow us to get an early understanding of how the incremental hint system worked. We relied on the hint system only a few times, and were only put off by one hint. It was the only free hint (the others gave a time penalty), which gave the feeling that the designers knew there was a flaw in the puzzle flow and this was their fix.

Between the layered solves and the variety of puzzle types, most of the puzzles allowed each member of our team to contribute something meaningful towards the solves. Gathering and solving each puzzle felt like being on an interactive sightseeing tour of our section of Manhattan… although generally I don’t recommend getting into trucks or talking to that many strangers.

Brett Kuehner’s Reaction

• – The initial puzzle was a bit more challenging than many of the others, getting us off to a slow start. Having a more gentle on-ramp would have allowed players to build a feel for the puzzle style of the game.
• + The “in play” area of NYC was clearly specified, avoiding any confusion or long diversions to incorrect locations
• +/- One delightful puzzle involved identifying and interacting with actors in a public space. It was fun, but would have benefitted from confirmation that the actors were in fact part of the game. A small GGC pin or patch that was visible when you approached them would have been helpful to prevent players from accosting random strangers.
• + GGC used the area on and around the High Line in Manhattan very well, with a diverse set of location types and activities
• + Teams were routed via a web interface to avoid too many groups clustering at any puzzle location at the same time
• – The game lacked a consistent puzzle rhythm. Some puzzles involved multiple steps and locations for a single solution, others had a single step. This made the puzzle flow feel choppy. Other puzzle hunts like DASH have a smoother and more predictable rhythm.
• – One puzzle had confusing gating, where we were given an item and also a code that we had to immediately enter into the site to get the rest of the puzzle information. This was not clear, because it was different from the pattern with every other puzzle, and we spent 5 or more minutes trying to solve the puzzle with incomplete information. More than half of the other teams I spoke to were tripped up by the same thing.
• + Many of the puzzles used high-quality physical components and physical interactions
• + Two puzzles involved food, in ways that were creative, fun, and delicious
• + None of the puzzles were too involved or time-consuming, keeping our energy levels high most of the time
• ? One puzzle involved scent, which is generally considered a risky puzzle mechanic, and this one added a layer of additional complexity. Surprisingly to me, most teams seemed to handle it fine.
• + About half the puzzles involved talking with performers or actual shopkeepers, and those were particularly fun
• + Several puzzles had interactions that I’ve never seen in a puzzle hunt before, and they were especially enjoyable
• + Overall, GGC was well designed and executed, with hints available to keep teams from getting stuck. It was a great way to spend an afternoon, even with the minor bumps in the puzzle flow noted above.

Matthew Stein’s Reaction

The Great Gotham Challenge knocked it out of the park yet again with their eye-opening annual puzzle adventure through the streets of Manhattan. This year’s quest started at Penn Station and guided us around Chelsea, especially centering around The High Line — a park I love and know well. Each puzzle stop was solidly designed and memorable in its own way, with a smattering of standout “wow” moments sprinkled throughout. My favorite interactions included a real life “Where’s Waldo” with nearly a dozen actor plants around Penn Station, a portal in the back of a delivery truck, and a running bit about GGC’s signature French perfume brand Gigici. (Note: If somebody actually starts a puzzle perfume brand, you have your first customer.)

While this year’s event didn’t have some of the high-budget reveals of last year’s, like renting out an entire movie theater or displaying a puzzle on a giant digital billboard, I actually found this year’s more human-, snack-, and swag-centric approach to be overall smoother and more balanced. While one puzzle fed us pizza last year, this year’s popsicles and boba were welcome treats on a warm day. A magical t-shirt is a quality swag item that I’ll be proud to wear, though its puzzle required some prior cipher knowledge that not everybody on my team had. GGC excels in the flashy, yet the real beauty of their experiences emerges from the smaller moments of connection, observation, and discovery, transforming your perception of the city around you in subtle but lasting ways.

Like with most previous GGC experiences, the gameplay’s modularity posed both strengths and weakness. On one hand, being able to adapt the order in which different teams saw puzzles meant that we rarely hit any bottlenecks or ran into other teams, and such smooth flow is not to be taken for granted. On the other hand, there was little sense of progression and, lacking a metapuzzle or anything functioning as such, no sense of meaningful finality. The game could have been a few puzzles shorter or longer without really making a difference.

In my recent review of Stephen Ng’s The Solano Human Project, I lamented the lack of site-specific ARG-inspired puzzle experiences out in the world. While GGC isn’t quite available on demand, it most certainly scratches the same itch and has quickly become a delightful annual tradition that I greatly look forward to. With few similar offerings of this depth and quality available elsewhere in the US, GGC is an event worth traveling for.

Tammy McLeod’s Reaction

Having only previously experienced the Great Gotham Challenge virtually, I was eager to attend an event in-person. GGC MMXXIV did not disappoint!

The hallmark of a Great Gotham Challenge game surely has to be the surprising, and ever more creative ways they find to integrate puzzles into the environment. The scale at which they construct these integrations is impressive, more so because it is always done cleverly enough to go unnoticed by passersby, yet with enough subtle clues to be perceivable by players. The delight of discovery was dished out repeatedly during the course of the game, and I ended the day on a dopamine high despite the exertion of walking miles around the streets of Manhattan.

This event ran in June 2024 and is no longer available. However, Great Gotham Challenge runs shorter public events all summer. Check them out here.

Disclosure: Great Gotham Challenge provided the Hivemind reviewers with a complimentary play.