Room Escape Artist

Criogenic is one of the best escape rooms in Madrid, Spain. Here are our recommendations for other great escape rooms in Spain.

Cold start

Location:  Madrid, Spain

Date Played: April 25, 2024

Team size: 3-8; we recommend 3-4

Duration: 120 minutes

Price: from €46 per player for teams of 3 to €25 per player for teams of 8

Ticketing: Private

Accessibility Consideration: The game includes crawling, climbing, stepping over obstacles, and entering confined spaces.

Mess Meter:  🧹 (out of 5)

Emergency Exit Rating: [A+] No Lock

Physical Restraints: [A+] No Physical Restraints

For more on our trip to Spain, here’s our field report.

REA Reaction

Criogenic was just a really good time. It was funny, playful, and leaned hard into its pop-culture influences, but still managed to narratively justify the decision.

Throughout Spain we played a variety of games that strove to elevate escape room play in different ways, including physicality, emotion, intensity, and build quality. Criogenic was reasonably ambitious, but didn’t turn any of the knobs all the way up… except for fun. It was a really good time, and that felt deliberate.

To add to it, Criogenic was in an incredibly convenient location in Madrid. If you’re visiting the city, this one is so easy to get to. That really is a selling point in and of itself for many travelers, especially those who aren’t building their vacations around escape rooms. If you’re in Madrid, I absolutely recommend visiting Criogenic.

Who is this for?

• Adventure seekers
• Story seekers
• Puzzle lovers
• Sci-fi fans
• Best for players with at least some experience
• Players who don’t need to be a part of every puzzle

Why play?

• A novel and interesting approach to escape room storytelling
• Engaging and varied gameplay
• It was humorous and memorable

Story

We’d signed up for the new low-cost cryogenic system. It promised a perfect life in the future, in a better society. What could go wrong? We stepped into the hibernation chambers.

Setting

We began this game by entering individual cryogenic chambers, which looked like over-sized white lockers. They stood alone along two walls of a small, bare room. They were sufficient, but not particularly compelling.

The future looked… familiar.

Gameplay

Cryogenic was a standard escape room with a moderate level of difficulty.

Core gameplay revolved around searching, observing, making connections, solving puzzles, and completing challenges. The puzzles often relied on communication and teamwork. The challenges included moderate agility, speed, and aim.

Analysis

➕ The narrative structure was brilliant and funny. Criogenic played with pop culture in a way that was innovative and justified.

➕ We made a great friend along the way.

➕ The puzzles in each act worked together to achieve a plot point, and move the story forward. We especially like the first scene where we figured out a lot about this future, and a later scene where we had to prove who we were in the scenario.

➖ There were some audio quality issues. One speaker was distorting character audio and cracking. In another segment the music was too loud, drowning out the more relevant audio.

➕ Cryogenic 3D printed a lot of their props, which gave the futuristic world a specific futuristic vibe. The printing was well done. The puzzling was tactile.

➖ Throughout the game, the tech felt just a bit too janky. Although the 3D printed props were really neat, the other elements of the build and and prop construction weren’t on the same level.

➕ Each new set reveal was dramatic and surprising.

➖ There was opportunity for additional attention to detail. For example, one early puzzle had extremely tight tolerances and didn’t lock in place, making it unnecessarily frustrating to solve, and also confusing as to whether we were doing the right thing (we were). Another challenge was too faint to feel fair. One box of props seemed misplaced (unsafely so), considering how the team would move through the space.

➕ The challenges engaged the whole team. They didn’t require impossible levels of physical prowess, but we did have to move our bodies.

➖ One sequence didn’t hit the right buttons for us. It seemed overly simplified. The whole set up was underutilized.

➕ This collection of futuristic pop culture references felt cheesy at first, but as the story played out, the hodgepodge made sense, and was funny. The ending was dynamic, and while it too was corny, it totally worked.

Tips For Visiting

• We played at the Madrid location.
• There is street parking nearby, but leave time to find a spot.
• This game is available in Spanish and English.

Book your session with Criogenic’s Cryogenic, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.