Open Mind Room Escape - 11S [Review] - Room Escape Artist (2024)

Never forget

Location: Barcelona, Spain

Date Played:April 23, 2024

Team size: 2-5; we recommend 3-4

Duration: 90 minutes

Price:from €90 per team for teams of 2 to €140 per team for teams of 5

Ticketing:Private

Accessibility Consideration: The game includes crawling, climbing down a high ladder, shaking, and maneuvering through narrow spaces. Each player is required to wear a helmet (which is provided).

Mess Meter: 🧹🧹 (out of 5)

Emergency Exit Rating:[A] Push To Exit

Physical Restraints:[A+] No Physical Restraints

For more on our trip to Spain, here’s our field report.

A Warning

Before we begin, I want to state plainly that 11S is, in fact, a 9/11 escape room.

I state this as a trigger warning… and I state this because I know full well that we have readers who feel strongly that a game like this should not exist. You don’t have to play this game, and you certainly do not have to read this review.

Please do not harm your emotional well-being for the sake of knowledge.

A Personal Note

I’m a New Yorker. I was born in New York City and raised just outside of the Boroughs. On 9/11, we could see the smoke in the sky from our town, and far too many of my friends had no idea whether their parents were ok. Not all of them were.

I’ve long felt that there is an American experience of 9/11 and a New Yorker experience of 9/11. More than 20 years later, this still feels raw to me. And the same went for our whole team, one of whom lost a relative in the Towers.

I will also add that from my perspective, 9/11 isn’t just the victims who died in planes and buildings that day. It is also the victims on all sides in Afghanistan, Iraq, and countless other countries too small for most to notice that we have soldiers on the ground. 9/11 is the grand scale loss of freedom through the explosive expansion of mass surveillance and militarized policing. And 9/11 is the residents and responders whose health was wrecked by whatever was in the air in lower Manhattan. 9/11 is far bigger than the people who died that day… and too many people died that day.

My country changed on 9/11 – not for the better. The world changed on 9/11 – not for the better. I changed on 9/11.

I say this because I want you to understand my mindset going into 11S.

REA Reaction

11S was a sincere game looking to explore difficult and real subject matter. There was not a single moment where I felt that it was created cynically.

I could feel the sincerity of the game’s creator, who hosted our experience. When we explored the large and detailed set, we could feel the attention to detail… and it was difficult to look at the set without fully appreciating how much effort went into creating this game.

I see what Open Mind Room Escape was going for… and in a lot of ways achieved.

At the same time, I have some deep issues with 11S.

The biggest was that while some of the gameplay was experiential and evocative… far too much of it was old school escape room puzzling that felt painfully out of place. Finding numbers on junk and putting those numbers into a lock is 100% the wrong type of gameplay for a 9/11 game, and I have never been more confident about a specific piece of game critique in my life. When 11S was gamey, it was cringey. This wasn’t an isolated one-off puzzle; it was easily half of the game.

The experiential moments that really spoke to the tragedy of the day were present, and they were the high point. I could quibble about the finer points of execution in some of these, but I can comfortably say that if 11S was fully made out of experiential narrative moments, it would have been more emotionally painful to play, but it also would have felt a lot more successful to me.

At the conclusion of 11S, we spent a large amount of time in a small memorial that honored the victims of 9/11 in general and more specifically all of the stories and people referenced in the game. This memorial was well-meaning, but stumbled in so many different places. From the use of real newscasts and footage that we badly did not want to remember, to the overlay of the Open Mind Room Escape logo on top of that footage, the memorial felt more like rubbing salt than salve into the wound. Also, the video intro to the memorial made my entire team disassociate at exactly the same moment.

I believe that the escape room medium has the capacity to explore real and challenging subjects. At the same time I think that it is extraordinarily hard to do so successfully.

11S has succeeded in confirming for me that it is possible to make dead serious escape rooms, but it also showed me that these things cannot be gamey… and I deeply believe that it is far harder to make a game like this about a culture that you do not belong to. So much context and sensitivity was lost. Even in the memorial, all of the focus was on the day of 9/11 while ignoring so much of what was lost. At the same time, we appreciated that memorial… we needed it. Exiting that game into a lobby would have been brutal.

I also have to add, it’s a tough pill to swallow to see a 9/11 game being operated by a for-profit company.

I believe that games like this can and should exist… but damn is it hard to do it well… and to do it respectfully… and to have a deep and full appreciation of the suffering of the people who died that day, have died since, and the living who are stuck dealing with the aftermath of the actions of monsters.

11S is a paradox. It’s great and it’s weak… and it’s interesting and it’s frivolous. I love it and hate it. I’m glad that I played it, and it will take me some time to forgive myself that I forced myself to relive that horrible day so that I could write a review of an escape room.

In the end, the irony of my situation is that I cannot even tell you whether or not you should play 11S. I just hope that this review has helped you make the choice for yourself.

Who is this for?

• People who are open to seeing a sincere attempt at a 9/11 escape game
• Adventure seekers (but not in any normal way)
• Scenery snobs
• Best for players with at least some experience
• Players who don’t need to be a part of every puzzle

Why play?

• The set was grimly beautiful
• Some of the gameplay was painfully engrossing
• There is nothing else like this
• You will feel something

Story

It was the morning of September 11, 2001. We were firefighters responding to a call in the subway station under the World Trade Center.

Setting

Against all odds, Open Mind Room Escape managed to make an immersive environment that evoked the World Trade Center on 9/11.

While the level of quality varied from space to space, overall, the environment of 11S sold the fiction, with the notable exception that one key set piece that was far too small to adequately represent the reality of the situation.

Gameplay

Open Mind Room Escape’s 11S played like a standard escape room with a moderate level of difficulty. Grappling with the environment and story added an extra layer of difficulty and complexity.

Core gameplay revolved around searching, puzzling, crawling, climbing, and physical challenges.

Analysis

➕Before entering the experience, we put on helmets. These were essential from a safety standpoint, but also did a lot to establish our role in the experience.

➕The set design was impressive. The first reveal was especially evocative. While there was variety in the quality of the sets, there was no question as to where we were and how high the stakes were.

➕The props had heft. It felt right to interact with the equipment in the environment.

➕11S was at its best when the tasks were fire-fighter-y. I write “tasks” and not puzzles because the best gameplay was in figuring out what we needed to do as a fire fighter in this situation, and accomplishing that task.

➖11S was at its worst when we were solving typical escape room puzzles that didn’t make sense in the scenario. They felt like the wrong type of solving, and they pulled us out of the headspace of 9/11 and firefighting. This was the nature of the opening scene, and was so unlike what we were expecting that we stumbled with a relatively simple puzzle.

❓That said, the escape room puzzles were generally well-clued, and would have been fine as puzzles in a different game.

➕Open Mind Room Escape constructed some creative door mechanics that represented the realities of the situation, while also being opportunities for problem solving.

➖A major setpiece was so obviously incorrect in scale and type that 11S would have been better off without it.

➖There was opportunity to make a late-game pivotal scene more lifelike. The prop design was a bit confusing, which was exacerbated by the lack of directional audio and the audio timing.

➕/➖ We exited from the game to a memorial, which was essential. We needed this time in order to start to process the experience. That said, much of the design of the memorial didn’t land right for us. Some choices made us uncomfortable, these included overlaying the Open Mind Room Escape logo, and the inclusion of some of the most visceral video footage of 9/11.

➖While the game was playable in English, there was a lot in Spanish, especially in the memorial, which made us feel less welcome, even though the tragedy was our own.

➖Some aspects of the Open Mind Room Escape experience were offensive. The waiver went against the stated goals of the experience. Open Mind Room Escape does not own this story. We paid for this experience, but none of the profit will go to the victims or towards any relief organizations.

ℹ️ This experience used real people and real stories. Open Mind Room Escape told us that they got permission from the victims or their families to tell their stories.

Tips For Visiting

• There is street parking nearby, but leave time to find a spot.
• This game is available in English.

Book your session with Open Mind Room Escape’s 11S, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.