RATING: 4 Keys          RESULT: Win          REMAINING: 15:25

A bitter subway worker has unleashed a killer train, it’s up to you to get things back on track.

You are a maintenance crew called to save the New York City subway underground. A power blackout in the city has ensued chaos on the subway lines all over Manhattan. A runaway subway train is careening at full speed towards the Brooklyn Terminal. Your objective is to restore power to the terminal and stop the train from derailing. You have one hour before the train reaches the curve and only the remote shut off button can stop it. Can you pull it together and save everyone on the train? Good luck! …Welcome to… “The Terminal”.

It was bound to happen sooner or later, a disgruntled employee of the New York City Transit Authority has gone off the rails and quit their job in a blaze of glory. Not only shutting down the power grid to the city, but doing it shortly after letting loose a runaway train. The ensuing chaos spells certain doom for the citizens of the train if it isn’t set back on track within one hour, naturally.

Quite frankly, with such poor labor conditions, it’s amazing that it has taken this long for an incident like this to occur. Thankfully a crew of expert maintenance workers have been training for such a disaster and will be dispatched to the subway terminal containing the all important remote shut off button. Restoring power to the entire city of New York within just one hour won’t be easy, but lives are at stake and you’re just the team for the job.

Of course, a blackout means The Terminal is dimly lit. Mercifully, an abundance of flashlights are immediately available for the maintenance crew to explore the situation at hand. The handheld illumination reveal walls covered in graffiti and tattered advertisements for products long past their expiration date.

What appear to be actual NYC Transit signs and maps add an extra layer of authenticity.  A series of electrical boxes along the wall hint at the sequence of tasks that will be required to restore power and switch the tracks of the runaway train. Scattered garbage, a lost suitcase, and a layer of grime complete the scene.

A vacant information booth located squarely in the center of the terminal quickly becomes the focal point of the mission. Although there is, predictably, no transit worker within the booth to provide information, hints are delivered via a monitor located within. We wish they could have incorporated the hints within a speaker announcement system to really amp up the immersion. 

It may take the maintenance crew a considerable amount of time to discern their first task in the quest to save the commuters of New York City, but once they do the puzzles generally flow smoothly and intuitively in a linear fashion. From soda machines to graffiti, the crew will have to make use of all the components of the subway station to complete their mission. Some of our favorite puzzles involved clever use of a security camera that initially seems to only have scenic value and a payphone that must be returned to multiple times, occasionally resulting in comedic red herrings.

Although most of the puzzles cleverly take full advantage of everything one might find in a subway station, they often don’t necessarily feel like real world tasks that would lead to the restoration of power or getting a train back on track. Starting strong with a realistic goal of turning on the lights in the station to create higher visibility leads to more mundane tasks that feel more like filler. The more boxes the crew opens, leading to the next task, and the next, the immersive world initially presented by The Terminal does begin to lose some of its luster and connection to the storyworld until the crew gets closer to the finale.

From the first second we stepped inside of The Terminal, there was no doubt we were fully ensconced in a grimy subterranean chamber, long past it’s prime. While there is plenty of fun to be had within, our biggest disappointment was simply that there wasn’t more of it. With our mission staying solely within the titular terminal, we rarely felt a sense of wonder and discovery or any urgency to save the runaway train.

The world of The Terminal is modest in size and ambition, but it makes solid use of it’s limited floor plan with immersive scenic and puzzles that require a keen eye and strong communication.  Despite wishing that the puzzles were more grounded in the story world, The Terminal ultimately provides enough to keep seasoned crew members entertained while offering up an appropriate challenge to new recruits.

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Venue: Themescape

Location: Broomfield, CO

Number of Games: 2

GAME SPECIFIC INFORMATION:

Duration: 60 minutes

Capacity: 8 people

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

Cost: $28 per person