Beyond Boundaries: Exploring The Doors of Divergence Escape Room in NYC

*The beginning bar area at The Doors of Divergence. Image Credit Escape the Roomers.*

Escape Room Field Report - East Coast

Location: New York City. Williamsburg, Brooklyn to be precise.

2) Madness 1917

Environmental conditions: Hot. Hot. Hot. Hazy with Canadian smoke. Pride Weekend in NYC brings a celebration of thongs.

Summary:

We do two narrative heavy escape rooms produced by Doors of Divergence. Escape rooms started out as simple puzzle rooms with a theme, short on the story with a ton of padlocks. But the genre has grown, so more and more have turned up the performative elements to create a world. The Ministry of Peculiarities has been doing this for some time. Doors of Divergence are new to scene (opening in 2022) and the word on the street is that they are full of characters and story. Also, the two rooms can operate as individual experiences, but they are parts of single narrative, and choices made in the first segment, Heresy 1897, will affect the situation in the second segment, Madness 1917. In this way, a patron can return and make different choices solving one of the issues with escape rooms, “repeatability” or the return customer.

In both experiences, you start off in a bar. Everything should start off in a bar. The bar patrons are used to seeing strangers pass through from one timeline to another, and they give you the lay of the land before you enter the timeline that awaits you.

Stepping into Heresy 1897, heavy on Symbology. Photography is discouraged, this image is credit to Escape The Roomers.

1) On the first adventure, Heresy 1897, we go in as a duo without a team hoping we meet some quality folks. And we do, but only 2, so there are only 4 of us to tackle this escape room. We could have used more.

The experience is dense in puzzles. There are twists and turns and tiny details to be noticed to move forward. This is when a larger team comes in handy. Our guide, a masked figure belonging to the Order of the Three Keys lays on a thick narrative and works hard to keep us moving along on the right track, but there is a lot to do here. We learn the symbology of gods, explore Egyptian maps, deduce life altering experiments, decode the carvings on an ancient obelisk, all leading up to an encounter with a demon yearning to enter our world and wreak some sort of havoc. And in that moment, you are given a choice…

Yes, we respect the rules. But rules are made to be broken. Personal info redacted during Madness 1917. Photo by Terry Podgorski.

2) The next day we return for part 2. We only have 1 other person joining us so we persuaded the 2 lovelies from the first adventure to join us for the second portion. And they do. Thank goodness, because we needed them.

In segment two, Madness 1917, we enter Holy Grove Sanitarium catering to those shell shocked by the events of World War 1 which was probably instigated by the demon we helped in the previous story. But no worries, there’s always a chance at redemption. Here, we meet a doctor and nurse new to the job. After a brief introduction we are given a tour where to our surprise we end up in two adjoining cells, admitted to the asylum, the group split, but able to communicate.

Over the next hour we work as a team to discover who inhabited these cells before us, play with spooky dolls that correspond with local, macabre murders, deduce that the doctor wants to lobotomize us, deduce that the nurse is not who she seems to be, steal a key that leads to our escape, and once again a member of the team comes face to face with the demon and is given a choice…

Conclusions:

What we learned from our choices in these two segments: We like to help rampaging demons cross over to this world. We don’t know why. We’re not even sure we knew we were doing it when we did, but the choice of eternal life seemed just too damn tempting. So maybe we learned something about ourselves.

We also learned that some rooms are tough nuts to crack. In the first segment, we looked over some obvious clues, but again that’s what a large group is for in these trying times. 2, 3, or 4 people cannot see or do everything.

In both segments, the sets are well drawn populated with ancient maps, carved figurines, tubes of scientific goo, and a monolith with glowing runes needing to be activated. The props and puzzles fit well within the story. The dollhouse and doll situation, truly creepy. In the second segment (Madness 1917), the need to communicate between two cells turned up the excitement, and we required less help in general because it was more intuitive. The presence of the two actors playing the nurse and the doctor provides for more banter and easier storytelling. On the first adventure, I began to feel a bit sorry for the poor actor who had to prod us through the Heresy 1897 story. But in Madness 1917, the narrative flowed smoothly.

Recommendation:

It’s for those who like to escape more than they like immersive performance. We read that Doors of Divergence was heavy on the narrative, which they were, but we expected more in the way of performance and less in the way of escape room. That is not the case. These games are not for novices. Though again, the actors are helpful and no player will be locked away for life and called a loser. We survived. Everyone survives. In the end, it is fun.

The worlds are very well defined: the first a dungeon with hidden Egyptian secrets for eternal life, the second an asylum of murderers controlled by a demon. The puzzles and the tech high quality. Be prepared.

The East Coast tour to Doors of Divergence concludes our Field Reports from the Summer of 2023. We’ve been off investigating other suspects, but these belong to a different category of experiences, those of an Alternate Reality! Stay tuned…