The Arkham Asylum Files: Panic in Gotham City originally appeared on Kickstarter some time ago: July, 2022: see here. At the time, they were offering three games for about $350. Why were these games so much money? Because these games are augmented reality games! You physically set-up some components and then use a special app on your phone or iPad to look at the components … and it inserts “stuff” into the scene via the app. See below.

In the example above, we built just a few buildings in Gotham City with the included components, but when you look at the city through the app, you see other buildings! Other features! There are inserted into the reality! So, your app becomes a view to the world of Gotham City.

When the original Kickstarter for this game came out, I went back and forth as to whether I should support it. It looks fantastic, but it was a technology-based game on Kickstarter. Experience, mine and others, makes me very leery of any kind of Kickstarters with technology. Why? Typically, Kickstarters deliver late, delays make technology obsolete quickly, support for technology can dry up quickly after a Kickstarter, and technology Kickstarters typically are more expensive. In the end, there were too many reasons not to support it, so I didn’t back it, but instead I chose to see what would happen.

What Happened?

So, Infinite Rabbit Holes did deliver a game! I saw it being referenced (early July 2023) on a few sites, and I thought to myself: “Oh, they did actually make a product! Let’s check it out!” So, for about $135, I ordered a copy of the game and had the game delivered to my house.

For a game with a lot of augmented reality, it sure comes in a big box! See the Coke can for reference.

This seem to be a shipping trend now, a box-in-a-box: the outer box takes the shipping damage, leaving the inner box less touched.

What Is This?

Panic In Gotham City is a cooperative Escape Room/Adventure game with 5-6 hours on content for 13+.

The game bills itself as a “Mixed Reality Adventure” (see above), but it’s really an Escape Room over 6 hours (that’s right, 6 hours) that uses your app/ipad for augmented reality interactions.

Before you blanche too much at the running time, you can save your game and come back to it. There are seven chapters to the game, so you can stop at any point at the end of a chapter and come back to it at a later time. It’s a very cooperative Escape Room game: players work together to solve crises in Gotham City,

How Do You Review This?

How do you review something like this? You can’t talk about the plot too much because you don’t want to give away spoilers. You can’t talk about the puzzles of augmented reality too much because some of the best parts of the game were discovering the solutions and the augmented reality. The surprise is part of the fun!

What we’ll do is give some snapshots into our gaming experience and show you what we saw: out of context, I don’t think these will be spoilers, but you can sense of the game. So, this is more a snapshot of our experience with the game.

Experience

Four of us gathered one night, with the intent on playing all 6 hours of content over two sessions. We’d play the first 3 or 4 chapters, then leave the game set-up for next week. This was a commitment: we knew this would be a big game, but we were all up for it!

The iPad drove the game: we would constantly set it up on top of the box to watch content and videos to move us to the next session. The introduction video makes it very clear you need a well-lit space and a lot of room to move around! We ended up getting rid of all our chairs and just standing around the table and box, frequently peering into the iPad.

The intro video”suggests” you broadcast the video to a TV nearby so it’s easier to watch the videos and content. If you were to use a phone instead of an iPad, you should absolutely do that! There’s no way you should just play this game on a phone. You frequently stand around watching videos or other content, and a phone screen would be way too small. So, caveat emptor:

• Play this on an iPad with a big screen so everyone can see OR
• Play this with a phone broadcasting to a TV everyone can see

For all that is holy, I think just playing this on a phone would be a terrible idea!

Mixed Reality

There really is a lot of physical real-world stuff in here. You end up making a city (which is one of the reasons you want to leave the game set-up for the next session: it’s too much work to put this away!)

Like any Escape Room, there will be puzzles and clues hidden all over the augmented reality and components that come with the game.

Physical Exertion

One thing to be aware of: this game is actually physically challenging!  Like I said, you have to constantly rove around the board, so you are standing the whole time.  And you are holding the iPad up and looking at the board at weird angles: crouching, standing, extending, and other weird positions. I would pass the iPad to other people frequently, so they could all stay involved and so I could sit for a second!  We joked that the last time we had this much physical exertion was playing Dungeon Fighters (from out Top 10 Cooperative Dexterity Games)!  

I joked that I was going to wear kneepads for the second session, and I probably should have.

A Few Caveats

There are a few things to be aware of with this game.

One: this is a game, that once you’ve played it, you won’t play it again because you have solved all the puzzles!  Luckily, you CAN reset the game!  I plan to reset it and give to Charlie and Allison, my Escape Room buddies.  Of course, I have found that if I wait a few years, I forget most of the puzzles and I can replay it again, but that’s up to you.

Two: one of the reasons my friend Junkerman doesn’t like Escape Room games is because he feels that a few people take over the game.  While that can happen, it can be a little more pronounced with Panic in Gotham City because the player holding the iPad is controlling the action!  I think that’s why the game recommends you transmit the scene to a TV so everyone can see it easily.  To be clear, this “alpha player” issue did not happen in our game, but it could be more likely in this game unless you broadcast the scene to a local TV. Caveat Emptor.

Over Two Nights

We ended playing over two nights, but we probably should have split it into three nights.  The game is quite challenging, both physically and mentally! Although we finished it in two nights, I think we might have enjoyed it more over three nights.

Conclusion

If you do the appropriate amount of planning, The Arkham Asylum Files: Panic in Gotham City can be one the best experiences of the year. Make sure have a big enough area to move around, make sure you allocate the proper amount of space, make sure you set-up in a place where you can leave the game over a few weeks (It really is 5-6 hours of content), and make sure you share the duty of holding the phone/Ipad for the city. And be ready for some physical activity!

Having said all that, I think Akham Asylum Files: Panic in Gotham City is my contender for Game of the Year for 2023! As I was playing, I kept saying “This is so cool, this is so cool“. My friend Teresa described the experience as absolute joy. We really got into this game and enjoyed it immensely.

Playing the game over two sessions was absolutely imperative (and maybe it should have been three).  I do think the first session left such a good impression (like 9.5/10) that the second session actually wasn’t quite as good (maybe 8.5/10). 

If the price tag doesn’t scare you away (I paid $135), and you do some proper planning, I think this will be a fantastic experience overall for you: 9/10. I realize it’s a one-time experience, but it was so worth it.

Appendix

You can reset the game: see above as Sam, Teresa, and Sara put the game BACK TOGETHER. It took about 20 minutes, but since the game is pretty expensive ($135), it’s good to know you can get a few more plays out of it.

I also plan to demo this at RichieCon this year. Stay Tuned! RichieCon is coming soon!