Kevin Helock
- Sep 30, 2023
- 3 min read

Big Screen Escapes (Tannersville) - "Minutes to Midnight"

Updated: Apr 16

LOCATION:  Tannersville, Pennsylvania, USA

Photo above is property of Big Screen Escapes

📝 ETR DECODER

🔑 GAME: Minutes to Midnight
📅 DATE PLAYED: July 28, 2023
🎬 GENRE: Sci-Fi
🧠 DIFFICULTY (Based on 6 ppl): 7/10
👥 TOTAL # OF PLAYERS: 2-8 ppl
🕒 LENGTH OF TIME: 60 Mins
💰 PRICE: $30.00/ pp (2 ppl), $25.00/ pp (3 ppl or more)
☎️ BOOKING TYPE: Private
🔓 ESCAPED/ COMPLETED?: Yes [40:00]

📖 THE STORY

It’s just one hour away from New Year’s Day 1970, and aliens are about to invade. As flying saucers gather in the skies, you and your team of agents uncover a government conspiracy that has given the aliens their foothold in this world, along with a lead on “Project Lullaby,” a plan to use a very special song on the radio to send the aliens packing.

🎯 HIT THE BULLSEYE

Both rooms convincingly sell the illusion of being in a late 1960s government office without the use of heavy-handed parody. Decor is strong, yet subtle.
Props and sound design are both great, taking the puzzles in some cool directions.
The room has a good story that doesn’t slow down the pace of the room with exhaustive text documents.

🧩 MISSED THE MARK

Some elements in the room are showing signs of wear and could do with some repairs.
One electronic element was slightly miscalibrated, and required a frustratingly exact input to complete correctly.

🏹 TAKE A SHOT?

“Minutes to Midnight” is the second room I’ve done with the Big Screen Escapes brand, and overall I’m pretty satisfied. Though the decor in this room isn’t anything jaw-dropping, it nonetheless creates a convincing and interesting government office space for its story to unfold in. Speaking of the story, I was rather pleased with a narrative that is both interesting and streamlined, providing an engaging context for the puzzles without bogging the players down with the mountains of text some other rooms require players to sift through. While not everything in the room is fully explained by the end (I’m still confused about how we used the radio to avert an alien invasion), the story is refreshingly minimalist in its approach, ending up with above average writing that lends appeal beyond the limitations of the space the puzzles are housed in.

The room also has some great props, one of which was a cool piece of period tech I haven’t seen in a long time. That said, the biggest difficulty we had was the wear on some puzzle elements, which were largely functional but presented some resistance. One cabinet had damage around the lock that required a gentle touch to avoid breaking further, while the aforementioned piece of period tech was dropping a couple small pieces and required one member of the group to twist and hold a key to operate. While these were minor inconveniences, our team was delayed for some time by an electronic puzzle that wouldn’t accept the correct answer and required several well-timed inputs to operate. Later we learned that the result of our frustration was a slight miscalibration in the puzzle’s electronic elements that registered one value greater than whatever we put into it. Our game master was kind enough to take five minutes off our official time for the inconvenience, though we still finished the room with slightly dampened spirits. Hopefully, the team at Big Screen Escapes 2 is able to work out this technical bug for future players.

Despite these technical difficulties, I still had a great time in Minutes to Midnight, and am excited to do more rooms with Big Screen Escapes in the future. It’s clear to me that lots of love and imagination is being put into the design of these rooms, and I regret that I could only complete two of the rooms during my visit, as I am curious to see what else they have in store. If you’re in the Poconos area, I give Big Screen Escapes in general and Minutes to Midnight specifically a recommendation.

ℹ️ ADDITIONAL INFO

Parking available on site
Lobby area features merchandise, games for sale, and a detailed leaderboard displaying recent completion times
One player gets a polaroid victory picture
Complete the interactive video puzzles on the website for a discount code!