RATING: 5 Keys          RESULT: Win           REMAINING: 0:24

♫ Fly me to the moon, and do it faster than Brad’s team. ♫

Moonshotº is a remote play experience using portions of a physical escape game at the the Reason’s brick and mortar location. This game, however, is designed specifically to be offered as a live, online experience only. To read our Pro-Tips on how to best enjoy this new Remote Play genre, click here.

Moonshotº is a real-life space race designed to allow larger groups to get a taste of the thrill astronauts feel while launching into orbit. The story here is light, but the pacing and excitement make that easy to overlook.

The premise is clear: be the first team to tackle all five stages of launching a rocket to the moon. With as many as ten teams competing at the same time, this is no easy feat, and evokes some of the most organic and authentic sense of urgency we’ve ever felt in a remote play game!

Moonshootº is technically set in a physical room at Reason’s brick and mortar location, and although it does involve a pair of lives host (including our old friend Lola, who is now back In Spaceº) the majority of this experience is far more of a digital game than an avatar one. But don’t let that deter you from launching into orbit; Moonshotº is a digital game like no other.

The physical space used is a small, single room that has its share of buttons and flashing lights that one might expect to find in a Mission Control-type environment. What makes it most compelling, however, is the use of image-mapping projection to bring the entire world to life in a very real way – effectively transforming this small corner from modest to live video game environment.

Flight crews will spend most of their time prepping for the mission through a companion site, as well as other already established online resources such as Google Maps, Facebook, and, appropriately enough, even NASA’s official homepage. This layer of literal reality works to enforce the fact-driven storyworld of launching your own rockets in Moonshotº.

To successfully achieve a split-game dynamic, Moonshotº makes great use of Zoom’s ‘breakout rooms’ feature. If you aren’t familiar, this allows Reason to host every player in the same call, but separate them into their own virtual rooms, wherein they have no communication with the other teams. This prevents potential eavesdropping, while also creates a massive sense of urgency because space cadets never quite know what their interstellar competitors are working on. Indicator lights in Mission Control illuminate as each team completes one of their required five phases – but just how close they are to powering up the next bulb remains a mystery.

Appropriately for any space race, astronauts must obtain coordinates, chart a course and ensure the mission’s safety at all times. In doing so, cadets have the ability to remotely trigger things inside the physical Mission Control – something rarely found, but always welcome in remote play games.

Admittedly, Moonshotº does employ a couple of puzzle types that our team of experienced space travelers typically does not prefer to find within an escape game: a crossword and a magic eye puzzle. Thankfully, they’re but a small portion of a fast-paced and highly competitive experience, and are book-ended by genuinely authentic “science” tasks such as analyzing samples and charting rocket trajectories.

For some ‘Reason,’ each phase of the mission ends with a cat jumping out of the rocket, into the cold, dark, recesses of space. Perhaps more peculiar, we quickly learned to celebrate this without question.

Typically as a rule, Escape Authority puts little value on our win / loss record, because we feel strongly that playing a game should be far more about the overall experience. But sometimes, it’s fun to have a good old-fashioned race to the finish.

Moonshotº evoked a more passionate sense of competition from us than anything we’ve done in quite a while. Perhaps it’s because Brad and I opted to lead up our own respective teams to go head to head with each other. Editor vs. Founder – an epic battle within EA! Our teams, separately in our respective breakout rooms spent the hour excitedly shouting and quite literally cheering each milestone step made toward launch.

It was a close one for a while, too! Brad’s team soundly surpassed us on Phases 1 & 2 of the mission, before we finally were able to catch up. Thankfully, later phases had puzzle tasks that were better suited to my team’s skill sets, which proved just enough to push us over the top.

There’s a lot to do in Moonshotº, making this one of those rare times that having a larger group actually could be a very real benefit. Traditionally, the minimum capacity is ten, which will then be split into smaller teams of five and five that go head to head. There can be as many as ten teams of ten competitors each. For our smaller than ideal group of six, paired down to teams of three, it was a literal race to the finish, with just 0:24 seconds remaining for the winning team, resulting in the most authentic “SUICIDE CAT! WE WON! WE WON!” I’ve ever shouted out loud in my lifetime.

And although there may be some who allege that in the end, my team won only because we cheated, to them I say this: that wasn’t the only Reason.

*Montu, Escape Authority’s VP, Dog Business™ and lead home game correspondent endorses the opinions found within this review.

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Venue: Reason

Location: Remote online play at home, broadcast live from San Francisco, California

Number of Remote Games: 2

GAME SPECIFIC INFORMATION:

Duration: 60 minutes

Capacity: 100 people (split into ten teams of 10)

Group Type: Private / You will not be paired with strangers.

Cost: $300 per group

We thank Reason for inviting us to play this game. Although complimentary access was generously provided, that in no way impacts the opinion included within this review.