Will We Join ‘The Order’ Or Try to Destroy It? (A NoPro Escape)

by Kathryn Yu
Kathryn Yu
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July 10, 2018
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5 min read

I Survived the Room brings a branching narrative, theatrical set elements, and a live performer together in Long Island City

I spend a lot of time following strangers into strange rooms and strange situations—definitely more than most people. It’s part and parcel of being a fan and reviewer of the immersive arts. So when a group of friends wanted to try an escape room in Long Island City with multiple possible endings and a live performer, I was totally in… Which is how I found myself walking slowly on the sidewalk in a somewhat deserted part of Long Island City with a group of friends, following a masked figure in long, flowing robes, as he limped down the street with his cane.

Just a totally normal Thursday night in New York City.

(Minor spoilers follow).

After our uneventful stroll on the sidewalk, the strange man led us to the room entrance and provided some backstory to the world: details about the shadowy brotherhood we were able to encounter. Then my five companions and I were blindfolded and split into two groups. He left us with a series of odd medallions which could be traded for clues.

Three of us found ourselves alone, abandoned in a library with a series of alchemy-related books and Egyptian-themed paintings on the wall. We quickly got to puzzling, opening drawers and pushing buttons, searching for clues. (Unbeknownst to us, our three companions found themselves locked into separate jail cells in a dimly-lit dungeon as the start of their experience.)

Overall, the puzzles functioned fairly well in The Order, but there were multiple instances where a panel didn’t open or an item didn’t drop properly, necessitating the masked man to hobble in and jiggle something loose, which unfortunately broke the immersive aspects of the room. And during the first ten minutes or so, my group found itself working on multiple puzzles simultaneously without making much headway; our portion of the experience lacked an obvious path forward without help. Our group was also not a huge fan of the amount of paper involved in this room, as clues were often embedded in letters sent from one Brother to another Brother in the secret society. And at one point during the experience, one of our players pressed a sequence of buttons correctly but too slowly to “count” as a solution, which required outside help to continue, as we were “gated” from moving forward otherwise. That said, we found a few innovative puzzles that pleasantly surprised all of us: one involving a lyre whose strings were composed of laser light and another involving a dangling mineral on a string.

I also appreciated the in-game hint system, which involved ringing an old-looking bell to summon our masked performer; in exchange for a hint, we traded one medallion at a time. He would lurch forward into the room, leaning on his cane, becoming visibly annoyed if we didn’t hand over the token in time. On occasion, if we asked for help with the same puzzle more than once, he became more and more irritated, as if he couldn’t believe he had to help out these schmucks one more time, in perfect keeping with the theme. But the pace of the gamemaster’s walking often seemed at odds with our urgency to finish the room.

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When our two teams finally were reunited in the final chapter, we found ourselves in a narrow corridor that could barely fit all six of us. There was not a lot of space to navigate amongst ourselves in this hallway, so I can’t imagine what it might be like to play with a party of eight, which is the maximum allowable. It might be better to play The Order with only a party of four; however, this makes the initial “split” more difficult.

And, unfortunately, we were so eager to plow through the experience, we accidentally branched the narrative without realizing so. If one person placing object A into slot B splits the story without the group realizing an alternate pathway even exists, well, that’s a problem. Your agency only works when you realize the spectrum of possibilities, and we had committed to a specific storyline without it being a deliberate group decision. (After asking questions of the game designer afterwards, we realized that we would have collectively preferred the other branch of the narrative.) And there was an odd messiness to the final bit, because puzzles related to the other branch of the story were still visible (and playable) to us.

Despite these puzzle design issues, I had a lot of fun at The Order, particularly in exploring the sets and interacting with the live performer. I found the whole experience to be engaging. Our team finished with only a few minutes to spare, though the flow of the room needs improvement. Dedicated puzzlers may be quite disappointed at some of the aspects I’ve outlined above.

I Survived the Room’s latest creation brings together a lot of ambitious elements: a live performer who acts as the gamemaster during the experience, realistic sets with dramatic lighting and soundtracks, multiple beginnings and endings to entice players to come back and see what they missed, and, of course, puzzles that stymied even my group of experienced puzzlers. The folks at I Survived the Room run two of the only escape rooms in the New York City-area which use live performers (that I’m aware of, given the acquisition of Paradiso by another company with a different focus).

While not all of The Order works perfectly, it’s refreshing to see a NYC-based company experiment with the format and lean into the world-building, immersive aspects of escape rooms.

The Order by I Survived the Room is open now. Tickets are $25–30 per person. Recommended for ages 15+. Note: entry requires descending one flight of stairs; experience is also not recommended if you have issues being blindfolded.

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