RATING: 2 Keys RESULT: Win REMAINING: 7:55
Who would have thought that blindly meandering through the dark with friends would turn out to be more fun than opening the actual locks?
Are you scared of the dark? This kidnapping starts in complete darkness. And when the dim lights finally come on, you find yourself in a room covered in padded walls, Rorschach posters, and pill bottles. Time is ticking. Can you make it out before the captor comes back?
After narrowly escaping Breakout City’s most persistent kidnapper, the victims find themselves back in his grasp. This time, the abductees have been dragged deeper into the pitch-black corners of his lair. With no light and zero visual cues, there’s only one thing to do: start getting hands-on with every surface in reach.
Beyond an audio track which announces the current situation and sixty-minute clock, the narrative never evolves. At no point is any motive or lore explained, nor any justification as to why this kidnapper would leave another trail of puzzles after he’d already lost his prisoners once the same way. The experience had a traditional cookie-cutter serial killer story with no progression, just a central idea.
Victims are led one by one into the single-room chamber blindfolded and disoriented, without any reference to their position in the dungeon. The killer learned to take phones away this time around, so there were no flashlights or other light sources available to use. Walking around with arms sticking out like lost zombies revealed a small but open space with a few cabinets and ropes lining the foam-padded walls. The soft panels were appreciated as there was a lot of bumping and touching to be done in the dark, but they created a setting more akin to an insane asylum rather than a kidnapper’s lair.
After a few discoveries and a bit of time, a cabinet containing the game clock opened and revealed the only light source. It was dim, but enough to brighten the room enough to see the surroundings and input some combinations into locks. Once the space was revealed, it was quite bare. The pill bottles and x-ray diagrams suggested that the captives were being held in an old medical room, but the plastic skeleton in the corner suggested that more nefarious activities had been happening here.
There are only so many types of puzzles one can solve in complete darkness, so the initial challenges were unsurprising. Since the captor has taken away one of the more important senses when it comes to problem solving, these tasks are fairly simple and require focus and communication rather than deep thinking. They flowed well due to the linear structure and collaboration required, and led to a unique and surprisingly enjoyable opening chapter. Once some light was revealed, however, they became less inspired and much less interesting.
After this point, the abductor’s game reveals a glaring issue which will prove to be a problem near the end of the journey. With the newly found light source, hostages must decipher the combinations to several numerical and alphabetical locks all with distinct colored dials. If any of the victims have been fidgeting with one of the previously opened locks and scrambled the answer, prepare for a headache. The game punishes the kidnapped until they have remembered the correct input, re-solved the riddle, or asked the magical voice in the sky for a reminder. Factoring in having to differentiate subtle dial colors in dimly lit conditions, the late puzzle loop becomes an exercise in frustration.
Playing an escape game that requires solving puzzles in complete darkness is a fun novelty and worth giving a try. If Kidnapping 2: Afraid of the Dark played out entirely in the pitch-black, it would likely be a much stronger game and, at the very least, unique in most markets. Anyone looking to become this killer’s next victims should be sure to bring a group of fellow abductees they feel comfortable around. There will be lots of accidental touching and bumping while blindly working through the beginning act, especially with a larger group of prisoners in the small space.
Unfortunately, the fun and novelty of the situation fades out once light starts to fade in. Even though the beginning was enjoyable, it was difficult to walk out satisfied, especially concluding with a punishing task and having lived through a story without context. While getting kidnapped for the second time by the same criminal wasn’t the worst way to spend an afternoon, it’s not one worth going out of the way to experience.
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Venue: Breakout Games
Location: Chattanooga, Tennessee
Number of Games: 8
GAME SPECIFIC INFORMATION:
Duration: 60 minutes
Capacity: 8 people
Group Type: Private / You will not be paired with strangers.
Cost: $24.99 – $60.99 per person
