Escape room meets a Serial-style mystery in Los Angeles.
Here’s the bad news: Scout Expedition’s The Nest is sold out.
The potential good news is that this relatively new immersive theater company via theme park vets Jarrett Lantz and Jeff Leinenveber might extend their run. If they do, anyone who finds themselves nestled in the escape room/narrative/gaming overlap that is the immersive venn diagram should definitely check it out. The Nest is a unique gem that effortlessly combines storytelling with puzzling in a 45-minute experience that feels like a 90s point and click video game.
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The Nest can be experienced by one or two people at a time. Ostensibly, you are the long-lost relative of a reclusive woman named Josie who has died. Yet it’s not the trope where you must explore her decrepit and totally haunted mansion. All Josie has left behind is a cluttered storage space, full of boxes and various ephemera from Josie’s life. The guest is tasked with finding a series of cassette tapes on which Josie (voiced predominantly by actress Mackenzie Firgens) recorded audio diary entries. They begin in the 1960s on her 12th birthday (this tape voiced by actress Evlana Panelli), the day she received the tape recorder as a gift, and serve as a greatest hits compilation of her life’s key moments. The storage room also contains several locked and hidden spaces. The tapes contain clues as how to open these spaces and push deeper into Josie’s life story. The storage room is dark, with no natural light, and you will only have a single flashlight to guide you.
Now, you could perceive The Nest as yet one more escape room, in which the ultimate goal is to unlock all the things before your 45 minutes are up. You could also perceive it as an epistolary story, in which you must find all the tapes and absorb them completely. But perhaps a better way to enjoy it is to savor the whole of it — the integration of The Nest’s narrative and puzzles. You’re essentially on your own, but Josie is a presence, her voice filling the space like a ghost. The space comes alive most of all when you insert one of her tapes, press play and let her guide you as you delicately handle her belongings. Here, all of your senses are working in tandem to absorb not just Josie’s stories, but the sly clues she’s left behind. Josie is also, in some ways, an unreliable narrator. She is not the only voice on the tape, and her version of events sometimes contradicts that of others’. Pay too much attention to the padlocks and combination codes, and you’ll miss the visceral impact of realizing just what really happened to her.
Pragmatically, the space is cramped and dark. Some may have trouble moving around the space, which does require one to duck, crawl and squeeze. For me, the tightness of the space felt like I was an archeologist navigating Josie’s tomb and the tricks she’d placed prior to her death. The single flashlight is meant to hinder the escape room junkie, forcing them to slow down and, presuming they are with a partner, share. This can be frustrating if you, like me, have a hard time seeing in the dark as it is. For me, personally, I think the experience would have been vastly improved with a second flashlight. For someone who plays alone or who has better vision, it might not be an issue. As to whether you go it alone or with a partner, that depends on how you best function. A solo experience might feel desolate, but allow one to sink into the story. A partner provides someone to bounce ideas off of, which can be helpful if stuck on a puzzle. For such a tight and winding set, there’s a lot to cover and find.
Where The Nest really succeeds, for me, is the way it feels like a video game with the emotional impact of a gothic mystery novel. It is not uncommon in games — especially point and click puzzle adventure games — to have to collect items that both advance a story and remove barriers. This is true in games like Nevermind and mobile game Forever Lost, and it really works in The Nest. An ambient soundtrack does not detract, but does offer subtle clues as to your progress, the way a game might. A hint system revolves around a lawyer who periodically calls to check on you, but who remains solidly in-game. There is also at least one fantastic hands-on puzzle I’ve only ever seen done in a computer game, never in a real-life experience.
It’s rare that an escape room offers such a strong narrative, as many just drop you in a vaguely themed room and instruct you to unlock some stuff. And it’s even rarer still that a piece of immersive theater offers so many puzzles. (Possibly because when you’re moving a group of eight or more in 15-minute waves, you have to be sure they solve things in a timely manner.) If The Nest is a harbinger of more experiences like this, then that’s a good thing.
Scout Expedition Co. is offering a waitlist for a possible extension. Previous tickets to The Nest were priced at $45 for one or two people.
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