RATING: 4 Keys          RESULT: Win          REMAINING: 6:38

Not all heroes wear capes, but at Escape Authority we do. And not just when we go grocery shopping either.

This mission will take us deeper into The City than we have ever gone before. Intel states that there is an old abandoned railcar hidden inside the Cyber Station. We need you and your team to get this old thing up and running. Complete this and you can consider yourself a true hero.

Mission: Cyber Station takes us on the third adventure to the generically named city called… The City. Here, it is up to us to get an old train back on the tracks. The mission does not state why this is necessary, but our best guess is that the citizens lack proper transportation.

In order to get the railcar back to working condition, we must fix the electrical system, find a fuel source, and repair the engine. Not everyone would be up to the task, so we are the heroes that The City needs right now.

City 13 creates a believable and story-driven world that feels like a true extension of the second chapter in the series (Mission: City Reserve). We can now safely say that repairing trains is in our repertoire.

Mission: Cyber Station appropriately starts outside the abandoned building in front of the ticket booths. The walls are painted to look like brick, and one side has a public telephone – do those even exist anymore? The ambient noises and flashing lights add to the realism of the environment.

Once we make our way through the ticket area, we are visited by a locked door with a couple of windows to peek into the broken train. This station appears to have been abandoned for quite awhile since the walls and windows are caked with filth. A billboard up above lists the train schedule as a large clock ticks away to indicate the next arrival.

The inside of the train has a consistent feel to the rest of the world – it is equally as dirty and rundown. There are several panels with switches, knobs, and tubes along with a map of the subway routes. It has a somewhat futuristic look to it, but this is a Cyber Station after all.

The steps taken to get past the ticket booths and infiltrate the station are mostly linear, but it is possible to split up after that. City 13 does a wonderful job connecting the tasks at hand to the overarching story.

Mission: Cyber Station has a clever mix of types of puzzles. There’s some searching involved, but a majority of the game requires observation and making logical connections within the space. It is readily apparent when each stage of fixing the train is complete.

While we greatly enjoyed most of the game, the finale feels a little out of place from the rest of the room. It is unclear how it fit into the narrative, but we do appreciate that it is a team based activity instead of a solo one. Also, this last task becomes frustrating after a certain point because it is a test of reflexes instead a test of puzzle solving ability.

While the ending of the Mission: Cyber Station could use some polish, City 13 well integrates the tasks into the scenic so that we feel like we are repairing a train back to working order instead of just solving a set of random puzzles. It has become all too common that escape rooms fail to accomplish this.

Each game at City 13 revolves around the same story of entering The City and becoming heroes for the day. We enjoy the fact that each new mission appears to be part of the same world without feeling repetitive. Mission: Cyber Station is the third chapter in the series, and it is apparent that City 13 continually improves the overall experience with each new room that they build. We cannot wait to see where the fourth chapter will take us because we already miss feeling like heroes.

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Venue: City 13

Location: Oak Creek, Wisconsin

Number of Games: 3

GAME SPECIFIC INFORMATION:

Duration: 60 minutes

Capacity: 8 people

Group Type: Private with 4 or more people / You will not be paired with strangers, otherwise Public / You may be paired with strangers.

Cost: $30 per person

We thank City 13 for inviting us to play this game. Although complimentary admission was generously provided, that in no way impacts the opinion included within this review.