Crux Club - "The Dutchman's Loot"

Updated: Apr 17

Photo is property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

📝 ETR DECODER

🔑 GAME: The Dutchman's Loot
📅 DATE PLAYED: June 23, 2019
🎬 GENRE: Puzzle Hunt
🧠 DIFFICULTY (Based on 2 ppl): 7.5/10
👥 TOTAL # OF PLAYERS: Unlimited
🕒 LENGTH OF TIME: 90 Min
💰 PRICE: $34.99/ pp
☎️ BOOKING TYPE: Private
🔓 ESCAPED/ COMPLETED?: Yes

Video is property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

We are very excited to be trying our first outdoor escape puzzle hunt game today with Crux Club. Despite the hot weather in the busiest city in the world, we were ready for our challenge to find "The Dutchman’s Loot". Normally, what you would do is purchase the adventure book you like to try, download the app, register, and you’ll be ready to start your hunt. Today, we had the privilege of meeting the mastermind behind the development of this game and you can check out our YouTube video on the whole experience. Although, if you like to have a game master as well that can be arranged by booking one on their website.

This game is best played when the weather is nice (definitely not on a rainy day) as you’ll be carrying items in your hands throughout the game. We suggest having a pen/pencil and some friends with you so you can have an extra set of eyes and hands. However, the game can also be played alone if you like. You’ll need cell phone service as well since GPS will be needed for the puzzles.

The storyline is that Dutch Schultz stashed millions before he was murdered by a fellow mobster in 1932. We are treasure hunters in the East Village of NYC trying to find out what’s been hidden here all these years through a journal that was found by treasure hunter James Sherry.

As we are solving puzzles, we are learning a little history of NYC throughout the way. Even though Brandon is a fourth-generation born and I’ve been here for over 20 years now, we’ve never even heard of some of these places that the book took us to. As we are exploring the city at our own leisure (unless you are extremely competitive, we’re not), we stopped at places that we passed along the way (mainly food and drinks) and found “treasures” that we’ve never known before. We like to believe whatever we consumed was balanced off by the amount of walking we did as you’ll be doing a lot of that.

The puzzles were very creative as it incorporated a lot of the surrounding areas into their design. The only concern that had when we were talking to the creator, was that it would have to be constantly updated as this busy city changes its appearance every day. We did find some items that were either wrongly marked or weren’t there for that reason. The app is a resource we haven’t seen being used in combination with the book on a hunt before which we thought was clever. There’s a sense of accomplishment when you can check off each spot with the right answer to move on to the next. We liked how some puzzles also needed some “origami” rather than just reading and searching for things.

Overall, we really enjoyed this game and will finish it one day. As we said in our YouTube video, this is definitely a “dangerous” game especially for foodies because after 2.5 hours of play and 4 food stops later, we had only completely about 20% of the game. So good luck treasure hunters!

*** We regret to inform this game is no longer available for booking but check out other games on their website***

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Disclosure: We thank Crux Club for comping our tickets for this game. Although complimentary admission was generously provided, it does not impact our opinion of the review whatsoever.