RATING: 4 Key          RESULT: Win          REMAINING: 15:00

Radar screen or Mr. Coffee, even in the future nothing works. And this time it’s not because of raspberry.

Try to escape lunar station in disrepair and survive. Far in the outer space. Only team work can return lunar crew home.

Half of your party is trapped aboard a space station in a bad state of disrepair (an ironic premise given our personal experience on this day.) The other is piloting a rescue ship tasked with saving you.

This premise sets up perhaps the most clever use of splitting a team into different starting rooms we’ve ever seen. From there, you must band together aboard the lunar station to get it back up and running before it’s too late.

If it’s able to run once you solve its final puzzles.

Lunar Mission’s scenic is among the best we’ve seen from Maze Rooms. It’s somewhat sleek and minimal as one might expect a space station to appear, while still trending a bit to a sci-fi flavor to give it character.

The space feels large, with seven or eight different chambers on the ship to explorer, each with its own unique set of puzzle challenges. Lunar Mission is definitely one of the more satisfying space-themed games we’ve played.

Theatrical-style lighting really helps add a magical outer-worldly flavor to the space, helping to create the illusion that you really are in a unique locale one cannot just find in their every day life.

For the most part, the puzzles within this game remain intuitive while trying to exist within the story world – connecting to various officers of the ship, as well as tasks they may need to achieve – from navigating / landing a rescue pod to venting air pressure and even mapping the stars.

Lunar Mission also had one of the most clever uses and original adaptations of a claw machine-style puzzle I’ve seen yet.

The multi-step final puzzle started off being a total blast, until it decided on its own that it was done functioning for the day. And sadly, a major finale show moment that was to follow didn’t work at all, even with the staff rushing in with tools in a bleak attempt to get it back online for us to experience.

It was a long walk back to Earth that day.

Maze Room’s Lunar Mission actually has the pieces in place to be a great game and a real competitor in the LA market. Unfortunately, as we experienced in several Maze Rooms games, reliability of tech-driven puzzles and effects – or lack there of when it comes to that reliability can really hinder the over all experience.

We’re frankly not sure if Maze Rooms is technologically biting off more than they can chew, or if we just had a whole lot of bad luck across several different venues.

Obviously, we cannot speak on how reliable Lunar Mission is in the big picture. We of course only played it once. If this game does typically run as designed, with all puzzles online and all effects functioning, it would be really neat, and definitely something worth recommending.

I had fun imagining how the finale show moment would pan out – but sadly will never get to experience it first hand. It looked like the kind of thing that could have made for one of the more memorable game endings we’d ever seen – but sadly instead our ending was walking straight through it after the employee apologized for not knowing how to fix it. And he really did try to.

We’ve hesitantly elected to rank Maze Rooms with the 4 Keys it would have received had it functioned as intended. The truth is our personal experience was 3 Keys at best because of all the setbacks, but it’s our sincerest hope that our game was the anomaly, because a 100% Lunar Mission would be something pretty cool to experience!

Show your support for Escape Authority and get social with us:

Venue:  Maze Rooms

Location: Los Angeles, California

Number of Games: 4

GAME SPECIFIC INFORMATION:

Duration: 60 minutes

Capacity: 5 people

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

Cost: $90+ per group (price varies more larger parties)