"TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET TWEET"

overview

You're trapped in an abandoned mine tunnel with nothing but rustic lanterns as your source of light to explore. Find dynamite to blow your way out of the tunnel before your oxygen runs out.

Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time on this site (and believe me, it will happen many more times), please allow us to introduce...

TURNKEY ESCAPE ROOM COMPANIES!!!

These companies have pre-designed rooms that you can purchase for your business. They'll come into your venue and build it for you. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, but a lot of these design companies... well... don't exactly build the best rooms. When this happens, we call it a...

TURNKEY ESCAPE ROOM MOMENT

As you can probably guess...

...this is a turnkey escape room moment.

(This one specifically was developed by Morbid Entertainment.)

The most story you're gonna get out of The Mineshaft is what's on their website. Once at Escape LG, they'll treat you to one of those pre-made iMovie trailers explaining that we've been trapped in the mineshaft and must collect 3 sticks of dynamite to blow our way out before the canaries die due to asphyxiation, telling us that we will also die. Because, you know, we won't have suffocated by the time they do.

quick stats

gameplay time: 15 minutes

recommended team size: 2-3 players

difficulty: 3/5

scare level: 1/5

location: Lake George, NY

website: http://escapelg.com/

considerations: -all players need to duck through a small space -fog effects used -VERY low lighting conditions -annoying bird

scenery

Ah, now we get into the interesting stuff.

The Mineshaft looked amazing.

Rustic walls, clearly holding up crumbling rock, surround the space. The floors and ceilings are even incorporated into the theming. All the metal is rusty, as it should be, and the lights you'll normally find in mines or submarines are attached by metal cords to the wall, flickering. A birdcage hanging from a rusty hook has two yellow canaries in it, although they don't move.

A dust-covered sign warning us about gases leads to the second room, which has more rock and less wood. Chunks of it are sticking out, and it's here we find the dynamite slots and its detonator (the one with the two handles coming from a box, the one you get to push down - you know the type)! We're clearly deeper into the mine, and one step closer to freedom.

Everywhere you look, The Mineshaft is immersive. Every single prop feels like it belongs there, nothing jumps out at you, breaking immersion, and there's no distracting - well - anything. It even smells like it should, while not being overpowering.

It's impressive what The Mineshaft managed to do with about 10 square feet.

puzzles

When I first walked into The Mineshaft, I thought, "Oh, it looks so cool, please be good!"

It was not good.

Obviously, being a 15 minute escape game, The Mineshaft had constraints. But you can still fit - well - puzzles into a 15 minute escape game. I've seen it done before to great success. The Mineshaft had what felt like none.

A key led to a box, which had an item we knew where to place, revealing another key. There was no solving of anything. The entirety of the gameplay was "put object on place, take new object, put on place," etc. It was all just the old "item leads to item" method, which just doesn't feel like an escape game at all.

Perhaps I'm being a bit too harsh. The Mineshaft did have a couple of cool moments, like placing an item on a shelf and having something pop open, or having a medical box open when you put a cross onto it. But just saying that - don't you understand how you wouldn't solve anything in a room like this?

Well, I guess there was one technical solve. We spent about 75% of our game doing this one "puzzle". You know those four digit locks that have a different color for each number? There was one of those, and there were four colored numbers hidden around the room.

Here's the issue. The room is almost pitch black. The lights on the walls maybe spread about a square foot, and past that, you're gonna need your lantern. And the lanterns let you see even less. I quite literally had to press my lantern against the wall to see anything, making it near impossible to find those four numbers. I don't know how many times me and my partner said "it's so dark" to each other in those 10 minutes or so we were inside the room.

Other than that number puzzle, the other puzzles weren't necessarily bad. The tech's designed well, and there's nothing wrong about them. They just... weren't puzzles, and weren't very fun. There's no other way to put it - they're just mediocre.

I did appreciate the way we exploded our way out of the mineshaft. It was a nice touch I was not expecting after seeing the calm and quiet of the rest of the room.

pros and cons

pro: amazing scenery!

con: actually, I'm gonna have to take a bit to explain this. The premise was that we had to escape the mineshaft, but the trailer put an interesting amount of emphasis on the canaries. This is because about 8 minutes in, probably to indicate something about the time, the canaries started tweeting. Loud. We began to have to shout to hear each other. And the canaries did not stop. I think it was maybe 2 minutes later when they finally decided they had enough.

pro: explosive ending!

con: THAT. DAMN. NUMBER. PUZZLE.

pro: walk-ins accepted for the 15 minute rooms!

con: puzzles are, well, not puzzles, and mediocre at best. We literally talked about what we could improve about the game - for longer than we played it.

con(?): our attention was attracted to the canary cage from the opening moments. Pretty much the first puzzle in the game is to find a key in the room. Instead of putting it on one of the canaries or in the cage, Escape LG decided to put it in a corner of the room. Although small, this seems like a missed opportunity.

con: this is probably one of the most important things on this list. An average escape room will charge you $30 per person, for a 60 minute escape room. That's $0.50 per minute, per person. Escape LG charges you $15 per person, for a 15 minute escape room. That's $1.00 per minute, per person. They're charging you double what the statistics say they should be.

overall

When you take a step back and look at the whole room, The Mineshaft isn't bad. It's just not memorable. If it had real puzzles that made you think, or have an "aha!" moment, it would probably hook me on the shorter games. If this game changes, there's three things it needs to fix immediately: the number puzzle, the canaries and their tweeting, and to halve the price. If you're all about sets, you'll probably like The Mineshaft, so come on down to Lake George for a couple of minutes. But if you're mainly focused on immersive and fun puzzles, this may not be the 15 minute room for you. Overall, it's a mediocre room in a sea of amazing and terrible rooms. Nothing groundbreaking, but with a few edits, it's going in the right direction.

rating

5/10