On my first visit to the Paradox Bar I received a free drink ticket from myself, welcoming me back to the timeless venue. A handful of colorful characters slipped out of time, and found themselves at an old bar from the 1950’s. As another version of me explained in a letter, “it’s kind of a watering hole for those of us trying to repair reality – a place to meet, talk about our efforts, and compare notes while we try to find the right set of choices that will fix this rift once and for all.”
The Paradox Bar acts as in-universe lobby for a trilogy of escape rooms collectively referred to as The Paradox Cycle, although players often referred to the games by the company’s name: Doors of Divergence. The rooms had a relatively short run in New York City: the game’s first chapter, Heresy 1897 opened in June 2022. This was quickly followed by the release of its second chapter, Madness 1917, in September. Just over a year later, Doors of Divergence closed its doors with an in-universe farewell party in October 2023.
During those 16 months, I took seven trips through the rifts at the Paradox Bar, because the team designed an experience that meant every single visit was a completely different one, leading me through different puzzles and even rooms, despite nominally playing the same game multiple times. Luckily, an online alternate reality game seems to be implying that Doors of Divergence has found a new home, giving me an excuse to talk about what remains my favorite escape room due to the depth of its experience and the vaguely terrifying scope of its ambition.
Into the Rift: Beyond Choose Your Own Adventure
The Doors of Divergence experience starts at the Paradox Bar, where a welcoming bartender introduces teams to the space between times they have fallen into, and introduces a few of the colorful characters who have fallen into the rift with them. One might come across an engineer, an astronaut, or even a scout leader milling about the bar. Idle conversation might even trigger a special request for the pending journey through time: bring back a couple of gears to help fix a clock, perhaps.
My first night, the Paradox Bar even had some special programming planned, and the surprisingly spacious room’s stage was used for a variety show, complete with aerialist performance. Once it’s your group’s time to proceed into the rift, a member of the staff would pull you and your group to the side, and introduce the mission. But instead of dryly reading off a list of rules and regulations, players would be encouraged to pull a series of tarot cards, offering divinations of events to come (and the corresponding rules to help navigate those situations).
As players’ first interaction with the Rift, Heresy 1897 leads players into the past as they enter Edmond Cavanaugh’s study, where they encounter the game’s Proctor. Teams are challenged with a question that determines which of two completely different escape rooms to play, within that space.
That means that Heresy 1897 is technically two completely different escape rooms, that just so happens to occupy the same space. There’s an entire room of Heresy that is unique to that initial binary choice, and there’s nothing about the in-game experience that would even hint at that secret. Teams are also presented with a moral quandary at the end of every room, meaning Heresy 1897 has four different endings, even if teams complete the room.
To help players track these choices, post-game debriefs include handing out a series of cards to commemorate key decisions and actions from the escape room. Entering those codes into an online portal tracks your progress and choices through the game – not just for those key moments at the beginning and end of the experience, but for some of the smaller choices, rewarding players who push the edges of the experience. Did you get sticky fingers at an opportune time, or linger for a moment longer than you should have?
Madness 1917 is where you start to really see the impact of those choices, with at least four different narrative and puzzle experiences: every escape room team enters an insane asylum during the Great War, but the reason for being there is changed, and interactions with the sequel experience’s two actors starts taking a much more theatrical turn, although it is still an escape room experience at its core.
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