On June 2, No Proscenium sent NYC correspondents Blake Weil and Cheyenne Ligon to The Great Gotham Challenge, an outdoor scavenger hunt using public venues and performers scattered across lower Manhattan. Below are their two perspectives on the experience.

Blake: I don’t think I can remember the last time I felt like I had survived something legitimately dangerous. And while I love roller coasters, haunted houses, and things where I can safely get my adrenaline running, I don’t mean simulated danger here. I mean real brushes with danger: near misses while driving in your car, getting lost in the dead of night with a dead phone and no one around for miles, or slipping and catching yourself before a nasty fall. For all its virtues, the interactive puzzle hunt Great Gotham Challenge at least feels like it put me in real danger.

Cheyenne: As someone whose idea of a brush with death is the time I accidentally ate a handful of raw lima beans before Google informed me that my snack was slightly poisonous, I agree with Blake that the Great Gotham Challenge had a few frightening moments. Sure, no one was hurt, and more perilous recreational activities certainly exist, but the fact remains that the Great Gotham Challenge put players in several situations that could have led to real danger.

Blake: The picture you see above was taken moments before someone shouted “CAR!” and I had to dive for safety. The puzzle was solved, my adrenaline was pumping, and we were this close to the finish line, but only one thought kept coming to me:

I can’t believe these jerks told over 100 people to go play in traffic, and we just listened.

Never underestimate the allure of glory and a mystery prize, I suppose.

Cheyenne: It must have been the allure of glory that drove a group of young women to jump out in front of traffic, screaming as they divvied up the responsibilities of solving the puzzle and directing oncoming cars around their teammates. Blake and I watched, mouths open, from the relative safety of the narrow median while two of them frantically waved at passing cars like air traffic controllers while their friend crouched in the street. When the girl solving the puzzle got the answer, she popped up, breathless, and they all ran laughing to the sidewalk and on towards the finish line. When the light turned red and it was safe (well, safer) to try our hand at the puzzle, several waiting teams crowded around the tile.

Blake: Basically, the Great Gotham Challenge works much like an escape room, with a chain of linear puzzles leading to a final solution. There are, however, a few key differences. In this experience, all of Greenwich Village is the “venue” and multiple teams of three or four compete at once for the grand prize. Treats and surprises are scattered throughout the day. To preserve the sense of immersion and mystery in the hunt, almost none of the puzzles are marked as such. Additionally, your team is expected to interact with performers scattered throughout the area and anyone could be an actor planted along your route to give you clues. These elements elevate the foundation of an escape room by infusing it with the unpredictability and blurred lines of an Alternate Reality Game, turning Greenwich Village into the stage for an adventure all players could feel like the star of.

Occasionally, the experience worked spectacularly. Each individual puzzle started with an online riddle, leading you to a location and what to do there. Our whole party laughed when we had to call the phone number listened on a fake “Dan Smith Will Teach You Guitar” poster to get our next clue (even if we accidentally dialed a legitimate vocal coach first, thinking the clue was pointing to her.) At one point, we were told to look for mysterious prints in a park; when we finally got there, one of us was able to find the answer hidden in a special edition of a shopper paper commissioned by Great Gotham Challenge.

Each clue also gave us a snippet of local history; as someone who spends an inordinate amount of time in the Village, I loved getting to learn the history of the Magnolia Bakery (which came with free cupcakes and tidbits on how Sex and the City launched it from a local gem to a world famous attraction), or the history of the Astor Place Shakespeare Riot of 1849, often cited as the prime examples of class tension in 19th century NYC. The amount of food history sprinkled in gave the experience a bit of the feeling of a guided tour of the Village — it was awesome stopping to sample what is supposedly the best egg cream in NYC at Allan Ginsberg’s favorite underground newspaper stand, Gem Spa.

Cheyenne: While I also love a good snack, my favorite clue was a line from a Langston Hughes poem that led us to New York’s tallest glass staircase, which happens to be located in the Chelsea Apple store. Our only direction was to use a phone to call a famous Beat poet. After ten minutes frantically trying to decode strips of blue painters tape on the ground that ended up being completely unrelated, we realized that the Apple store was full of phones on display. In the contact list of the first phone we grabbed, we found a number for Allen Ginsberg. A call resulted in a voice message informing us that Ginsberg’s mailbox was full — probably because he had been dead for two decades — but a text message sent us on our way to the next clue.

Blake: We had also met a few actors across these locations, but none playing any particular character, per se; one of them was hawking the free shopper papers, while another was just a man tossing coins into the fountain at Washington Square Park. The people we interacted with were very much everyday people in everyday circumstances.

The way that Great Gotham Challenge created immersion was, paradoxically, to blend in perfectly with the environment. This filled even unrelated incidents and parties with mystery and intrigue; what was part of the hunt? What was just NYC weirdness being NYC weirdness?

Cheyenne: There was definitely a constant dynamic of wondering what was “in-game” and what was not. Were the Apple store employees told about our scavenger hunt? Or did someone from the Great Gotham Challenge just send someone in to casually put Allen Ginsberg’s phone number into every single display phone? Was the newspaper hawker actually an actor, or was he just a guy doing his real job, not knowing there was a fake page inserted into an otherwise legitimate shopper paper? The situation also happened in reverse, with non-players taking objects meant for the hunt. For one clue, we had to get a coin out of the fountain in Washington Square Park but, because the water was turned off that day, a dozen or so children were running around and gleefully snatching up the coins as an actor threw them, leaving none for the actual players.

Blake: My main complaint though, is that said design failed us when the threat of being in actual physical danger showed up. When we arrived at the Astor Place Theater (the “new” one, mistakenly, not the “old” Astor Place Theater that they had intended to guide us to), we were prompted to “find a way to do a good deed” by our clue. Enter stage left, appropriately enough, a middle-aged woman carrying some heavy bags.

“Oh, if only someone could help me with these and do a favor for me,” she complained.

We smiled. “Sure!”

I helped her down a flight of stairs, asked her where to place the bags, and she rewarded us with thick, fudge-y brownies. Having previously received cupcakes with a clue in the box, we logically assumed the brownies would provide our next clue. I dug into mine, nibbling to see if perhaps a card was embedded inside — nope. We inspected the box the brownies came in, while another group arrived to help the woman, receiving a box of brownies of their own.

Eventually we gave up trying to solve the brownie puzzle, and called in for our hint, accepting the penalty to our final time it would incur. (This hint system seemed to make the problem worse; by punishing requests for help, ambiguous situations could escalate quickly as players did anything to avoid calling in for confirmation.)

What came next didn’t make any sense: “Enter the Mitzvah Tank and look for a scroll.”

“Wait, what? What about the brownies? We’re at the Astor Place Theater, where they’re showing Blue Man Group?” we asked.

“There is no clue involving brownies or Blue Man Group.”

Cheyenne: The response came as a shock. Our entire interaction with the theater employee fit the clue perfectly; she specifically asked us to do a favor for her using the language of the clue, and then rewarded us with a treat. It was the same, familiar model we had already experienced at Magnolia Bakery and we trusted it. Like Blake, I tore into my brownie looking for a baked-in clue and, finding nothing, ate half of it. The realization that the woman was not an actress and the brownies not an in-game food left us feeling uncomfortable and disoriented. Sure, it turned out okay — a day-old theater brownie, while not the tastiest of brownies, is not going to kill anyone — but had the woman been someone else with more sinister intentions instead of a bored theater worker getting some free entertainment during her shift, the situation could have turned out much differently.

Blake: We soldiered on, eventually finding the Mitzvah Tank (a sight common to NYC streets, these vehicles are portable “educational and outreach centers” operated by segments of the Orthodox Jew community), but the energy was gone. Now each clue came with a sense of second-guessing ourselves, particularly if we had to interact with other people.

Cheyenne: We eventually made it to the final location, an arcade bar and brewery. Though tired from the day’s events, Blake and I were determined to see the Great Gotham Challenge through to the end, so we decided to stay for the awards ceremony. We spent a couple of hours drinking beer and trading stories with the other finished teams while we waited for everyone else to trickle in. It was not surprising to hear stories that echoed our own experiences. Issues ranged from the benign (the egg cream man failing to provide the team with a napkin stamped with a necessary clue) to the more concerning (one team encountered a homeless man near the Astor Place Theater, and believed him to be the actor who they were supposed to perform a good deed for).

As for our finish time, we found ourselves in a respectable 14th place. This ranking included 30 penalty minutes for our use of hints, including our reporting of the Blue Man Group Brownie incident. Many teams didn’t finish at all.

Blake: In previous ARG’s I’ve played, typically some sort of passcode or signal let me know when something was in-game and safe to accept whatever was given. Or in the case of more standard immersive theatre, the physical limits of the venue let me know whoever was present was “in” on it and safe. But because of the immense scope of Great Gotham Challenge, and the intentionally blurred lines of the design, anything and everything could just as easily be a clue or a risk, and after the brownie, no place felt safe enough to immerse; the danger wasn’t just bad on its own, it made the game less fun than it could be. Beyond that, like any ARG or escape room, when you’re looking for clues, everything looks like a potential clue. This is usually fine when it’s in a contained space, but can put both players and bystanders in dangerous or uncomfortable situations if it’s bringing them to public places.

Honestly, the Great Gotham Challenge was fun; it was a great way to get to know a neighborhood. The puzzles were challenging but fair, and the staff and (real) performers were friendly. But I can’t in good conscience not wag my finger at the designers. At a time when audience (and cast and crew) safety in immersive experiences is a prime concern, and with escape rooms in New York City being shut down to meet changes in codes and permitting, there was a pervasive feeling of irresponsibility here. Of course, they could have just picked another clue. But the plaque, an urban curiosity known as a Toynbee Tile, could have been featured any number of ways. Why not have an actor play a researcher of Toynbee tiles at the crosswalk and let you investigate a copy? Why not make the puzzle reliant on the text on the tile as wordplay, as opposed to forcing us to crouch in the street to view it under a stencil? With a little creativity and forethought, the risk could have been avoided.

Cheyenne: I think the issue of game boundaries and non-participant insertion is easily fixable for future iterations of the Great Gotham Challenge. First, find a way to better oversee gameplay. Misinterpreting a clue in an escape room is merely an annoyance. The environment is highly controlled and overseen by an attentive game master whose sole purpose is to ensure players don’t hurt themselves or the props. An open-world scavenger hunt is more anarchic by nature, but there are still ways to oversee the game and ensure player safety. The second improvement would be a sign of some sort to mark an object or an actor as “in game.” We saw this occasionally — the fake Dan Smith poster had a “GGC” mention in the corner, ostensibly to prevent us from calling the real Dan Smith (if, in fact, Dan Smith actually exists) — but it was not consistent. For example, we had to climb into a phony Mitzvah Tank to get a clue. If this vehicle was clearly marked with a Great Gotham Challenge logo, I would have been much less concerned about entering a stranger’s RV alone. Finally, devise a way to allow players to ask the game masters what is “in-game” without being penalized. The game is competitive and players are loath to waste ten precious minutes on a hint.

Disincentivizing players asking for help when it’s truly needed leads to dangerous situations.

Blake: So… would I play the game again? I might hesitate: I wouldn’t try to win and I certainly wouldn’t eat anything until after I had completed the game. The Great Gotham Challenge is a fun experience but one that’s certainly not for everyone: with about five to 10 miles of walking, and puzzles that stumped even veterans in our party, it’s definitely for puzzle fanatics who also happen to be in good shape. It was a fun day with my friends and despite a little danger, we did find the best egg cream in the city. At the end of the day though, that’s not worth risking life and limb — I’ll probably stick to my local diner next time.

Cheyenne: I would also think twice about playing the Great Gotham Challenge again. I had fun — the puzzles were well-constructed, challenging, and varied, and it was a nice way to explore a neighborhood I don’t spend a lot of time in. However, I would prefer something with a more cohesive storyline and, above all else, something that doesn’t feel like an accident waiting to happen.

With a little more structure, story, and awareness of safety issues, the Great Gotham Challenge could really live up to its name.

This edition of the Great Gotham Challenge has concluded.

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