RATING: 3 Keys          RESULT: Win          REMAINING: 12:23

A nefarious plot the destroy the world as we know it? Dark Cloud is at it again!

The stakes are higher than they’ve ever been before. There’s a dark cloud on the horizon. P.I.T.O.N.’s top adversary, the Dark Cloud, has created a dangerous weapon that could transform the world as we know it. Your team of up to 8 agents must infiltrate the Dark Cloud’s base and work your way past its innocent facade. In here, nothing is as it seems and you will need sharp eyes to find the hidden messages all around you. Uncover the Dark Cloud’s plan, decipher their secret clues, and try to escape with your life.

Dark Cloud is at it again. The nefarious hacker collective is only sixty minutes away from unleashing a deadly weapon that could alter life on earth as we know it. This isn’t the first time you’ve gone toe to toe with the world’s most elusive threat, and it likely won’t be the last.

Damn you, Dark Cloud!

Thankfully, you’re a member of P.I.T.O.N., a secret agency specializing in high tech espionage. It just so happens you have a certain set of skills that makes you the perfect agent to break into Dark Cloud’s secret hideaway. Your mission, which you have no choice but to accept is to intercept and decipher their secret messages, expose their evil plan, and escape with the weapon before it’s too late.

P.I.T.O.N. agents are escorted from the lobby to the beginning of their mission. Within several steps, the stark grey hallways transition into brick walls covered in graffiti and flyers for local businesses. You’re now outside! It becomes evident that the adventure will begin sooner than expected as the crew arrives at the front door of Dark Cloud’s secret headquarters. Spies are informed that they will need to find their way inside before they can gather intelligence and thwart the evil plot to destroy the world.

Using the hallway outside of the hideaway is a clever touch that maximizes the floorspace available for this secret operation, but no amount of spray paint, light poles, and tattered advertisements can hide the fact that you are, in fact, still standing in a hallway. This facade is even further destroyed when you are occasionally in full view of employees leading other agents to their own missions.

Once inside the hideout, agents will need to navigate through a very lived in speakeasy. The aesthetic could charitably be described as low budget sci-fi. A mostly sparse room that contains a bar with some stools and a wall of liquor behind it. Everything is painted black in order to accentuate the blacklight that illuminates a series of symbols found in a grid that takes up the floor. Although the dim lighting does some heavy lifting to create atmosphere, the scenic elements do feel a bit on the underdeveloped side.

Agents navigate their way through a series of locks and codes that operate in a mostly linear fashion. Spies nearing retirement age will likely have encountered these types of puzzles before, but The Infiltrator does have a few tricks up it’s sleeve.

Several tasks involved some seemingly well worn put-object-in-correct-place objectives, but ultimately turned the expected outcome on their head, forcing us to truly think outside the box. Our favorite involved a very clever use of liquor bottles that produced our biggest lightbulb moment of the mission.

Despite some creative and surprising misdirects, as the story unfolds we couldn’t escape the nagging feeling that our progress was being hindered by puzzles for puzzles sake. As a result, we spent a considerable amount of time wondering exactly why Dark Cloud would bother placing so many mundane puzzles in their secret lair.

Thankfully, the back half of the mission was loaded with objectives that felt connected to the task at hand. Hacking into computers, intercepting messages, deciphering codes and disassembling a technological weapon begin to stack up, leading to both a sense of real world immersion and much needed urgency.

We loved that before the mission even begins, Esc4pe sets the tone with their impressive lobby which is partially located within the actual vault of a decades old former-bank. Exploring such a typically off-limits location got us in the espionage mindset from the second we stepped foot inside. We also appreciate that Esc4pe provides a continued storyline from mission to mission, each with a clear objective and a subsequently heightened consequences for failure.

Despite the high-tech nature of P.I.T.O.N.’s mission, this adventure feels decidedly low-tech. We couldn’t help but feel that the theming for this facility is a bit outside of their means to execute it. The last thing we were expecting when being recruited as agents of P.I.T.O.N. was that we would have to deal with so many combination locks! Regardless, with a clever start and multiple rooms to explore as the story unfolds, there is plenty of excitement to be had for the agents that choose to accept this mission.

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Venue: Esc4pe

Location: Burlington, VT

Number of Games: 3

GAME SPECIFIC INFORMATION:

Duration: 60 minutes

Capacity: 8 people

Group Type: Public / You may be paired with strangers.

Cost: $25 per person