Review: MindQuest Escape Games

RATING: 3 Keys RESULT: Win REMAINING: +6:19*

Clever puzzles and original gags would oftentimes make for a great game experience. Unfortunately in this Cyber world, they’re more often too broken to enjoy.

Story

Cyber Crash follows the unique story of a computer hacking super villain of near comic book proportion. Cyrus Berringer, A.K.A. “CYBER” is the lone mastermind responsible for infiltrating a system which has not only granted him access to unlimited private information of every person on earth but also gives him control of government intelligence databases, including weapons and missile defense systems.

CYBER is a recluse obsessed with technology. There’s no telling what he’s capable of, and it’s up to you to stop him! Find his secret lair, break into his master computer and upload a virus that will crash CYBER’s mainframe once and for all.

Scenic

The scenic attention to detail tries to paint a clear picture of just how much of a madman CYBER really is. Binary code hand-painted crooked and messy back and forth all over every wall gives the impression that CYBER has spent many long nights in his lair working on his master plan.

Unfortunately as we have been repeatedly informed by you, our readers, is commonly the case at MindQuest Escape Games, it is not well maintained.

Broken props, effects and even worse so broken puzzles hinder this game, perhaps worse than any of the others at this venue.

Puzzles

One of my favorite aspects of Cyber Crash – as with all the games at MindQuest Escape Games- your goal is not simply to “escape the room;” to the contrary, every game is its own self-contained mission – each with a clear in-world objective. True to story in a way that few escape rooms pull off, the final moments of Cyber Crash really do have you finding a virus stored on a floppy disc (remember those?) and uploading it onto CYBER’s mainframe computer – even complete with a painfully slow percentage status bar! It feels completely authentic to the story world.

In fact no puzzle in this game feels out of place, and some are very unique and original gags. Of note, there’s one point where you and your friends will find themselves struggling to figure out which remote will control each direction needed to drive a themed RC car across the ceiling! (Sadly, we’ve heard this puzzle was so frequently broken that it is now simply no longer apart of the game at all.)

Again as with scenic, maintenance proves to be a bigger super villain than CYBER himself. We’ve heard reports of so many broken puzzles that it’s a wonder to us that tickets are still being sold to this game.

Overall

We were fortunate to be the very first team to ever beta test Cyber Crash (hence the asterisked escape time running past 60 minutes – we were told to play through any hiccups that might occur, and we did face a few as any game will in its very first run.) It was the fourth game we’d experienced at MindQuest Escape Games, and perhaps most exciting is that each one is completely unique. There’s no overlap of any of the puzzles. Each has its own focused objective and original backstory.

The bigger benefit for us, though, is we were able to play this game when everything still worked, and sadly in a state that one will not find it today. Our original rating for Cyber Crash was 4 Keys, for a combination of a distinctive theme and clever, unique puzzles – some of which we hadn’t seen before. Unfortunately consistent feedback from our readers has forced us to adjust our position on this game. If today were opening weekend, we’d certainly still recommend you give Cyber Crash a shot – but with as much has been reported to us by multiple readers at various times as being consistently broken, it becomes clear that this venue cares little about its own long term maintenance and thus the long term quality of the guest experience.