August 18, 2019 – Christina wasn’t feeling the greatest this weekend, and that could only mean one thing: it was time for me to do a scary escape room. Christina avoids rooms with jump scares, gore, or the occult, so I’ve got a short list of rooms near home saved for a rainy day.
One of the rooms that fit the bill was MindTrap’s “The Collector” room. I’ve done a number of other rooms at MindTrap, and they’ve got some of the most impressive theming in the area. The puzzles all are custom built to fit with the theme of the space, and the environments are completely seamless.
With Christina out, my best friend Jon joined me to take on the Collector. Jon is an accomplished escape room enthusiast in his own right, and The Collector marked his room #100. If I were to describe Jon’s escape room strengths, I’d start with his ability on puzzles. He’s far and away the strongest member of my escape room accomplices when it comes to physical puzzles and he’s also at the top when it comes to logic.
The Collector room was of particular interest to me because Jon and I had attempted MindTrap’s “Kidnapped” room a few years ago in the same physical space. The game had been completely overhauled into The Collector, and I was interested to see how that would work. It’s not uncommon to see an escape room change a game in the same physical space, but I had never seen this before for a business with such elaborate theming as MindTrap.
I double and triple checked before starting the game that the puzzles had been changed from Kidnapped to Collector, and the game master assured me it was a brand new experience. Sure enough, aside from the physical layout of the first little area accessible to players, the experience was entirely new, and I was afforded no extra advantage from having played the previous game.
The plot was similar to the Kidnapped game- a serial killer has kidnapped one of your friends, and the team needs to work together to free that friend and escape the lair. The game hurls surprise after surprise at the players with a good amount of jump scares and gruesome discoveries.
One thing I really appreciated about the room’s theming was that despite the grime, gore, rust, and imminent murder, I never felt concerned that I was at risk for pricking myself with rusty metal. I don’t recall the last time I had a tetanus shot (I’m probably overdue) and I really don’t want to have an escape room be the reason I have to rush to the doctor for that.
I was very impressed by some of the big set piece puzzles MindTrap deployed here. It was clear they poured a lot of care and attention into making custom props that fit the puzzles. I could tell the designers were big fans of the Saw movies, which really makes sense when you consider each of those films is about a group of people trying to solve their way out of a locked deathtrap.
It was neat to see how the design evolved since Mindtrap’s “Kidnapped” room. The biggest improvement was in how they integrated the theme and puzzles together, even going as far as integrating some jump scares into the puzzles themselves. I wish I could have chatted with the designers to learn more about how their experience with Kidnapped led to The Collector and how many of these ideas were floating around from day 1 vs. how many were developed after watching people play through Kidnapped.
One of my personal favorite escape room touches is a cool finale, something more than “door opens and you leave.” The Collector had a wonderful finale which left me unsettled, but in a good way. I won’t provide too much detail on what happened, but I didn’t expect it, and it made it especially gratifying to get out the door and back into the real world.
After clearing The Collector, Jon and I also tried out Mindtrap’s 5 minute hand trap game. With a name like “hand trap”, I assumed we were going to be dealing with a one-at-a-time gadget the game master would pull from behind the front desk for a minute of amusement. Color me surprised when I saw the real game was massive and could easily accommodate a team of 6.
Part of the game was figuring out what we were looking at, so I’m going to be very vague when I describe it. So a few quick bullet points:
-The Hand Trap does a good job selling you on the idea that failure will mean the loss of a hand.
-Like The Collector, the Hand Trap feels very Saw-inspired.
-The Hand Trap is absolutely worth the $5 price of admission, even if you can theoretically solve it in a minute or two. The engineering alone is worth taking a look at.
We solved The Hand Trap with a reasonable amount of time to spare, as much as can be considered reasonable when you only start with five minutes on the clock, and we both really enjoyed it.
We’re looking forward to heading back to MindTrap when their new nautical-themed escape room opens. Montgomery is about an hour away from Chicago, but it’s definitely worth the drive, as they have a number of very memorable, very unique rooms to experience.
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