The Box: The Mine Box

At 80 minutes the Mine Box would count as a super-sized game in the U.K., and it’s the longest at the venue, but still on the shorter side by Athens standards. The company’s name should not deceive you into expecting a crate-style portable game: they offer full scale escape rooms, and Mine Box is larger and more immersive than many.

The immersion is created with a high tech set with some immersive effects, audio and lighting. I went prepared to get filthy, based on past experience with other rooms that used similar themes, but that wasn’t necessary – this mine is pretty clean.

A key feature of the game is a machine for monitoring the oxygen level. At specific points your oxygen level becomes critical, and you must switch attention to solving something on the oxygen machine, a different task each time. While these are primarily exercises in following instructions correctly, they successfully give the feel of ‘doing engineering’ to keep your life support systems online.

The rest of the game has an enjoyably physical feel. In a dark environment having only two torches between four would have been quite frustrating, but they permitted and encouraged us to use our own phone torches. It also mostly avoided obvious tropes and instead uses several smart and original puzzles – two in particular provided satisfying aha moments where apparently intractable problems turned out to have solutions. The beginning was an exception, an unnecessary bottleneck that I didn’t feel added very much; but this was broadly a game that got ever better as it went on, leaving us on a high as we came out.

Mine Box is about underground adventure, delivered with technology and atmosphere with a thrilling finish; and along the way it also delivers with its puzzles. The oxygen machine keeps up the tension and adrenaline without becoming tiresome. There’s no shortage of excellent games in Athens, but the choice is a bit more limited for those avoiding anything scary; in which case Mine Box will be a great option to include.